Keeper, Beater, Seeker, Spy
by Argonaut57
Summary: Things seldom turn out as you imagine them. Kingsley Shacklebolt is dead, Percy Weasley is Minister of Magic, and Harry has been forced into early and unwanted retirement. Then one rainy night, four people turn up at Godrics' Hollow. There's a mole in the Ministry, and Oliver Wood needs a Seeker. Again.
1. Chapter 1

**Keeper, Beater, Seeker, Spy**

 **Chapter One**

Harry Potter was studying an ancient text on Divination. That might be thought unusual for a man who was a noted authority on Defence Against the Dark Arts. Indeed, he was both editor of and contributor to the standard OWL and NEWT textbooks on the latter subject. But someone whose whole life had been shaped by a Prophecy could be excused for taking, in his twilight years, an interest in the art – even a wizard could not call it a science – of prognostication.

Besides, he had time on his hands now he'd been retired. Even a man with three grown children and a football teams'-worth of grandchildren and assorted great-nieces and -nephews ends up spending a lot of his retirement alone. Especially when the chair on the opposite side of the hearth is conspicuously empty.

A stroll down to the shops, with a cup of tea at the little café or a pint at the pub. Chatting with the neighbours he'd lived among for so long – who was going where on holiday, who'd been promoted, who'd been made redundant or retired, divorces, marriages, births, deaths. It all went in one ear and trickled out of the other. Only enough retained to convey an air of polite interest.

The bright punctuation of Sunday lunches at his childrens' homes, noisy family holidays in August. Christmas at the Burrow. Poor Arthur five years gone, but Molly still the absolute matriarch of the clan that gathered there. Ginny conspicuous by her absence and never spoken of.

But in between, grey quiet days. Simple meals cooked out of need rather than for enjoyment. A few flicks of the wand all that was needed to keep the cottage clean. Harry lived at Godrics' Hollow now. Grimmauld Place long sold and Kreacher, despite his tearful protests, sent off into retirement. Money was not a problem, never had been. He made Ginny a suitable allowance, knowing that, despite her eager generosity in some areas, she knew how to hold household. His own needs were simple to the point of frugality; his only indulgences were his books, presents for the kids and tickets to the occasional Quidditch match.

Harry had become a scholar. Not a brilliant one, but a steady, careful one. No longer welcome at the Ministry, his opinions were still sought by the Wizengamot on several matters. He was a welcome guest lecturer at almost all the Schools of Magic – from the august and ancient College of Karnak to the almost aggressively modern Randolph Carter School. He'd even published several works to moderate critical approval.

So it was that this cold, wet, dark October evening found him poring over an 18th-Century translation of an ancient Greek text dealing with the Delphic Oracle. The knock on the door was so quiet that at first he thought he'd imagined it. A second, firmer knock put him on alert. There were wards and spells around the cottage which meant that nobody could come further than the front gate without him being alerted. In order to get to the front door, the knocker must be a wizard of equal skill to Harry, or greater. On the other hand, if somebody meant him harm, why knock at all?

Still, he took his wand with him as he went to answer it. A group of four men, dry despite the rain, huddled under the porch light. Standing in front was a tall, well-built fellow, older than Harry, with thick silver hair. Slightly behind him was another, equally tall, but slender; coldly handsome with thinning fair hair. Behind them both was a small, wiry fellow with mousy brown hair shot with grey, while next to him was a husky young man with fair hair. Harry knew three of them at once. "You'd better come in." He said. "I'll put the kettle on."

Making tea was always a quick process for a wizard, so there was very little delay in getting down to business.

"So," Harry said, "Oliver, Draco, Dennis and I'm afraid I don't know you, young fellow."

"Marcus Finch-Fletchley, sir." The young man replied deferentially.

"Marcus…" Harry blinked. "Ah! Justins' grandson, yes? You'd not long joined the Aurors when I…."

"When they fired you, sir." Marcus responded angrily.

"Enough, Marcus." Dennis Creevey said quietly. "We're not here to rake up the past."

"Aren't you?" Harry asked. "I can't imagine why the Secretary to the Wizengamot, the Director of WAND and the Head of the Auror Department would want to come and see me since my, er, career change. Unless it was about the past."

Oliver Wood shook his head. "The past will have a bearing, Harry, it always does. But something is happening right now. In the Ministry. Something bad. You know what my job is, right?"

Harry nodded. "You work for the Wizengamot. Specifically, you're in charge of Ministry oversight. The post was created after the War, because there'd been no real check on what the Ministry did."

"Exactly." Oliver agreed. "The thinking was that if there'd been proper oversight, Fudge, Scrimgeour and Thicknesse wouldn't have been able to get away with so much, so easily. So the Wizengamot created an Oversight Committee with a Secretary who keeps an eye on things for them."

"You forgot to mention that the White Council told the Wizengamot that if they didn't put their house in order themselves, it would be done for them." Draco Malfoy said dryly.

"Quite." Oliver shot Draco an annoyed look. "Regardless of why, I've been keeping an eye on Ministry activities for some time now. There've been trends I didn't like. The cutbacks in the Auror Branch in favour of more Whitelighters, for instance. A shift toward surveillance rather than arrest of people practising Dark magic, unless they actually commit an offence. There've always been apparently sensible policy reasons for the changes. Nothing I could persuade the Committee to take action on.

"Then there was Draupnir, of course, and the Jormungand Group."

"Oh, Merlin, yes, I remember that!" Harry interposed. "That was Percy Weasleys' big thing. The wonderful source that was giving us all that intel. He pushed it and pushed it to Kingsley, but Kingsley refused to put all his eggs in one basket. I suppose now Percy is Minister, he's got his way."

"That's right." Oliver averred. "Draupnir is now pretty much the only source the Ministry uses, and the Jormungand Group are the only conduit to it. It gives them a lot more power than they really should have."

"OK, fine." Harry said. "Percy's an idiot, I'll admit that, even if he is family. But that still doesn't tell me why you're here?"

It was Dennis who replied. "That's sort of down to me, Harry. Look, the Aurors have been downgraded. We're not supposed to launch any operations without Ministerial approval, and they always set their Whitelighters to watch us. But I run the department on the basis of what you would do in my place.

"So I developed my own sources, on the QT, and I got a bite this summer. There was a potential defector from some Dark magic organisation. They were looking for help, specifically from Britain. They wanted to meet up in Paris, so I sent Marcus.

"Tell them what happened, Marc."

"It was a Russian witch called Irina." Marcus told Harry. "She's married to one Igor Trubensky, who is supposedly an expert on international trade for the Russian Ministry. They were in Paris ostensibly to negotiate a trade deal.

"But although the trade deal was genuine, Trubensky was actually there to sit down with local wizard supremacist leaders. Irina Trubenskya was brought up as a wizard supremacist, but she changed her thinking ages ago. The idea that WS groups were joining up across borders was too much for her, so she reached out to us.

"I managed to set up a couple of meetings with her. Enough to obtain two very important pieces of information. One, that the group her husband is working for is the Black Council…"

"Isn't the Black Council supposed to be a myth?" Harry interrupted.

"Yes," Draco told him, "just like the Scholomance."

"Point taken." Harry allowed with a wry grin. "What else, Marcus?"

"The kicker." The young man replied grimly. "Irina told me that there is, and has been for a long time, a deep cover agent for the Black Council working in the Ministry, at a high level!"

"A mole?" Harry raised his eyebrows. "Is she sure?"

"Mole?" Oliver asked, puzzled.

"Muggle term for a long-term deep-cover spy." Draco explained.

"She was convinced." Marcus said. "Said she could get me evidence. I reported back to Mr Creevey straight away."

"And I made a mistake." Dennis said dourly. "I went straight to see the Minister. He told me to keep Marc working on Irina and prepare to bring them both in. Then two days later I got a crash call from Ernie Macmillan that Irina had been blown and to pull Marc out."

"I was watching Irina at the time." Marcus said. "I still wasn't fully convinced that she'd turned, you see. But I saw them grab her. Not Whitelighters, because they Apparated in and out. But somebody was on to me, as well, and I had to go dark.

"Given what Irina had told me, I thought I'd best steer clear of Ministry contacts, so I made for UNIT HQ in Paris. The UNIT wizards there thought the quickest and best way to get me out of France was to slip me onto a SHIELD heli-carrier that had been there for an exercise. Once I got back to the US, SHIELD passed me on to WAND and Director Malfoy debriefed me and brought me back here."

"I immediately contacted Creevey," Draco supplied, "he spoke with Wood, and here we are!"

"To do what, exactly?" Harry asked. "I understand there's a problem, but why tell me? D'you think I might know who this mole is?"

"Come on, Harry!" Wood admonished him. "You're still as quick on the uptake as you ever were. You know perfectly well why we're here!"

Harry looked at him. "You need a Seeker. Again." He said.

"And you're still the best, Harry." Draco reminded him.

"Look," Oliver said, "I could ask for a full audit, but if the mole is as high-up as we think he is, he'll be able to cover his tracks, or at least shift the blame. The White Council can't do anything because it's an internal matter. I could ask WAND, but…"

"But even if we tried to be discreet," Draco put in, "we would have to inform someone, and we don't know who it would be safe to tell, if anyone. Mrs Trubenskyas' intel was not specific enough to name an individual, but it was sufficient to place all the top people at the Ministry under suspicion."

"Who exactly are we talking about?" Harry asked. "I've not been keeping track. I know Percy is still Minister, of course. He's also still full of himself and still a prat. I see him at family gatherings, and he's always polite, but a little distant. Politics, I used to think, but with what I've just heard…."

"Well, there's Jeremiah Fudge." Oliver said. "He's Foreign Affairs. Cornelius Fudges' son, you know. He's trying to recoup the familys' reputation. He's as vain as his father, but much brighter.

"Then there's Dean Thomas -you remember Dean?"

"He was in my year at school." Harry recalled. "We were in the same dorm. He went through the War with us, and he joined the Aurors when he left school. He dated Ginny at school, and they had an affair later."

"Yes." Oliver hesitated a moment, embarrassed, then carried on. "Dean's now Head of Magical Enforcement, that puts him in charge of the Aurors and the Whitelighters. As I said, he's been downgrading the Auror Branch, but the Whitelighters are still going strong.

"Which brings us to our final suspect – Ernest Macmillan, Head of Whitelighters. Clever, hardworking but unimaginative and by-the-book."

"And your suspects are effectively the Jormungand Group." Harry noted.

"Except for Ernest." Oliver said. "We think he arranges the meetings and runs messages, but he's not actually privy to any of the raw intel."

"You will have noticed," Draco added, "that they are also the group – with the exception of Macmillan – who were campaigning for the removal of Kingsley Shacklebolt for some years."

"Oh, yes, I noticed!" Harry said. He raised his voice a little in imitation of Percy Weasleys' strident tenor. "Minister Shacklebolt is pleased to call his methods 'proactive'. I call them heavy-handed and divisive. He calls the habit of sharing everything to do with our world with muggle agencies 'co-operation'. I call it dangerous and careless. We must adjust our thinking to new circumstances. A more measured approach is required nowadays. There is no longer a war on, but Minister Shacklebolt is trapped in a wartime mentality. We also do not need external interference to manage our own affairs."

"Because we've been making such a good job of it for the last three hundred years." Draco added sourly.

"We've managed." Oliver said.

"Managed to stagnate!" Draco growled. "I'm a Pureblood, Oliver. A scion of one of the oldest, purest and most bloody-minded families in our world. But I've spent years working with Muggles. I have a unique perspective on this.

"While we were quarrelling over how many generations it takes to make a Pureblood out of a Half-blood and whether or not a Muggle-born can ever really be a wizard, Muggles were exploring the entire world. While we were safeguarding medieval traditions and 'the wizard way of doing things', Muggle science and technology were advancing in leaps and bounds.

"We got left behind, Oliver. Harry and Kingsley brought in a breath of fresh air. When Harry first came into his heritage, all we had was wizard wireless. Now we have Wizard Vision and the World-Wide Wizard Web. New-generation scrying equipment can do everything a Muggle computer can do. And we were contributing to the world, not just sitting apart and sneering!"

"But Minister Weasley and his clique want to close all those doors. Pull us back into the century before last, if they can. That can't happen. Our world is finally moving forward rather than looking backward, and we need to keep it that way."

Harry looked with some surprise at his old schoolboy rival. Draco had dropped his usual drawl and slightly archaic, careful phraseology. He had spoken with real, if controlled, passion.

"I seem to have corrupted you, Draco." He remarked.

"Don't take all the credit, Harry." Draco replied. "Astoria has a lot to do with it as well."

"Never mind." Oliver interrupted. "Harry, we need you. We need the skills you've developed since you left the Ministry. We need your detective skills. You're also still one of the most respected and feared wizards around. And you're not part of what's going on.

"We want you to find this…mole…for us. Who he is, who he's working for and how much damage he's done!"

"We're not even sure who he works for?" Harry asked.

"We can't be." Oliver admitted. "Look, the Draupnir intel puts almost everything down to the Thule Society, right? But we only have that intel to tell us that Thule is still active. Grindelwald and Kroenen were the leaders of Thule, and they're both dead. BPRD agents killed Kroenen years ago before the Bureau became part of WAND, and Voldemort killed Grindelwald in prison in 1998. If the Society is still active, we don't know who runs it.

"There are still Death Eaters out there, and some of them occasionally show up – usually random attacks on Muggles. But they don't seem to be organised, and with both Voldemort and his daughter dead, they don't have anyone to rally around."

"My half-brother Regius would be their natural leader," Draco put in, "but unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – he is several witches short of a coven."

"Quite." Oliver said. "But now we have the information Dennis and Marcus have brought in. The Black Council. But we don't know if it's accurate or where such a body would spring from."

"We can speculate." Draco pointed out. "And that with some degree of assurance. When SHIELD finally attacked HYDRAs' HQ and the Red Skull was arrested, we of course could not get everyone. That included many wizard HYDRA agents. I killed Piet van Roek, but Cormac McLaggen escaped and has since dropped off the grid.

"Other HYDRA wizards followed their Muggle colleagues into the smaller criminal or terrorist groups HYDRA has since fragmented into. Some also joined SPECTRE and AIM. But others are, as the saying goes 'in the wind'. Now, they may have joined a resurgent Thule Society, or gone on to form a wholly new body.

"When we add the fact that Justin DuMorne, who you will recall was arrested when you destroyed the Scholomance, escaped from a White Council Maximum Security prison less than a year after his incarceration, and has since vanished, matters become more serious. DuMorne was aided in his escape, and only two wizards would be capable of such a feat. Clearly Dr Strange was not involved, so that leaves Baron Mordo, who was still at large at that point, but has since been imprisoned by Dormammu.

"DuMorne would have no inclination to join the Thule Society, which he would doubtless regard as parochial in its aims. But we cannot safely assume that he would remain inactive for so long a time. If this Black Council exists, it is likely that he will be a key figure in it, if not the leader."

"That's slightly beside the point, Draco." Oliver reminded him. "We can find out who this 'mole' is working for once we find out who he is.

"Harry, we need you to do this, and it needs to be done absolutely secretly. Will you help us?"

Harry sighed. "My problem is," he observed, "that too many people know how to push my buttons! You know I'll help. The problem is how! I'm being watched, you know. Oh, they're very discreet and non-intrusive, but they know and I know that I can spot a Whitelighter a mile off!"

"Now, Harry," Draco drawled, "you can't tell me you don't have contingencies. You trained me, remember?"

"OK, yes." Harry allowed. "I have documents and bank accounts in the name of Emrys Utterson. I can apparate, floo or portkey as I choose, but they've put a trace on my Whitelighter skills, so I can't Orb without them knowing where I've gone. But if I vanish from here, or go too far off my normal route, they'll notice."

"That I can help with." Draco stated. "WAND Unspeakables have finally come up with a wizard version of the SHIELD Life Model Decoy. We call it a Homunculus and it can be programmed to follow your normal behaviour pattern and to pass as you for a while. It can even do everyday magic. I can have one here by tomorrow.

"I can also give you use of a SHIELD safe-house in London and some off-the-books help. Shall we begin?"

Tyler Broughton had been drawn to the greenhouses ever since he had first arrived at Hogwarts a few weeks ago. So tonight, he had naturally gravitated toward them. He knew some of the older students, especially the Prefects, were unhappy with his evening walks, often reminding him to be back in time for lights-out. But the noisy cheerfulness of the Gryffindor Common Room, with its endless chatter about Quidditch, was oppressive for a naturally quiet boy. So, homework done, he would put on his cloak and go outside for a while. Even cold, misty nights like this were a relief and a refuge.

Still, being inside was better than out, so the door left ajar had been a temptation he couldn't resist. He wandered among the plants. Examining them, inhaling the mixed fragrances, reading the labels and wondering when he might get to study them.

"Well, young Broughton, what are you doing here?"

The voice made him jump out of his skin. The more so because he hadn't heard anyone approach. He turned quickly, too quickly and almost fell over his own feet. The tall figure reached out to gently steady him.

"Did I leave that door open again?" He asked. "Forget my own head, next! Breathe, lad! No harm done."

"S-s-sorry, Professor!" Tyler managed to squeak.

Neville Longbottom, Professor of Herbology, was a tall man who walked with a pronounced limp. Two fingers were missing from his left hand. His face was gaunt, with the appearance of having shrunk from a much fuller shape, and disfigured by a long, puckered scar that ran along the left side, pulling the corner of that eye down. A scar that didn't seem to bother the Pureblood and half-blood students, but did render the man a little scary at first for the Newbloods.

"Nothing to be sorry about!" He told Tyler. "I was careless, true. But you were just curious, as a lad of your age ought to be.

"But why were you outside on a filthy night like this, instead of snug in your Common room with your friends?"

"Don't have any friends." Tyler mumbled.

"Are you getting bullied?" Neville asked sharply.

"Oh, no!" Tyler said at once. "Well, some of the Slytherins – but they do it to all the Gryffindors, and we get them back, anyway.

"I mean, some of them take the piss a bit, but I'm used to that. I've always been clumsy, and sometimes the magic gets a bit out of hand…."

"Wait a minute!" Neville said. "Broughton, Broughton….You're the lad whose feather got stuck to the ceiling in Charms, right? And the one who turned the frog into a miniature velociraptor instead of a hedgehog?"

"I couldn't stop thinking about _Jurassic Park_." Tyler explained. "My parents love that film."

Neville laughed. "I heard some of the other kids talking about that!" He said. "They said it was the coolest thing they'd ever seen!"

"Professor Potter said the same." Tyler confided. "'Very cool but wrong species', he said. But it escaped and I don't think they've caught it yet."

"It'll help keep the mice down." Neville told him. "But look, Tyler, it _is_ Tyler, isn't it? Tyler, it takes time to settle down and make friends, so don't worry too much."

Tyler shook his head. "Not for me. I got put into the wrong House. I told the Hat Hufflepuff, but it just laughed and said Gryffindor. But I'll never be a Quidditch player, or an Auror, or any of the things Gryffindors are supposed to be!"

"You mean like Herbology Professors?" Neville asked. "Oh, yes, I'm a Gryffindor, too! Just like you. I even wanted to be a Hufflepuff when I first arrived. Only difference is that your magic is too powerful while mine was hardly there for a long while.

"So yes, I felt wrong at first, and thought I'd never have any friends. But now I've got lots of friends. Some of the best friends a man can have."

"Give it time, Tyler. Relax and be yourself. The others will do the same in time – they're all busy putting on a show right now, or re-inventing themselves.

"And if you ever need a quiet chat, well, I'm here most evenings. Now you'd better scoot, before lights-out!"

Neville watched the lad go, then went back to his little office and made tea. There was a student like Tyler came along every few years – he'd been one himself, as he'd told the boy. He'd have a word with Jessica to keep an eye on the kid, though.

 _Friends,_ he mused, _we all need friends. Especially ones who will sacrifice everything they've worked for to get you out of a jam!_


	2. Chapter 2

**Keeper, Beater, Seeker, Spy**

 **Chapter Two**

Harry caught a glimpse of himself in the glass door as he entered the office of International Securities, Plc. It gave him a seconds' disorientation, reminding him that it was a long time since he'd been undercover. His glasses were gone, replaced by tinted contact lenses that transformed his vivid green eyes into a commonplace brown. The usually untidy hair was gelled neatly back, and it had taken only a little magical encouragement for his perennial 'five o'clock shadow' to become a carefully-trimmed beard. Even his distinctive scar was no match for a good quality foundation and concealer.

He added a light Welsh lilt to his voice as he introduced himself to the receptionist.

"Ah, yes, Mr Utterson." She said. "You want access to your box today? That's fine. Take a seat and someone will call for you in a moment."

The formalities over, Harry was left alone in the small room to open his safety deposit box in private. Inside was a large manila envelope containing the life of Mr Emrys Utterson, BSc, MRICS, Chartered Surveyor in private practice. Certificates, credit card, debit card, passport, business cards, membership cards for a sports and social club in Cambridge and a 'Gentlemens' Club' in Soho and an iPad. Harry kept Utterson's driving licence at home, along with the ID card needed to access this box.

Concealed further back in the box, however, was an item that most people would not have expected Mr Utterson to carry. A 9mm Heckler & Koch USP Tactical pistol, along with a clamshell holster, two spare clips and a box of hollow-point ammunition. The weapon was an old one, similar to the one Harry had 'liberated' from a dead HYDRA operative years ago. But it was reliable and he was used to it. Most wizards still had few, if any, defences against firearms and not even Harry could cast a Shield charm quickly enough to stop a bullet. It was his ace in the hole, as the saying went.

He quickly stowed the contents of the box about his person or in the attache case he was carrying. He placed a few items specific to Harry Potter in the box, closed and locked it, then left. As he went out into the street, he was again surprised at how light-hearted he felt, considering the situation he faced. _I'm as bad as Logan,_ he mused, _can't stay out of the action!_

Harry had been given a key to the safe house – a three-bedroomed semi in an unremarkable street in Croydon – so it wasn't until he was safely inside that he was enthusiastically welcomed by some of the 'help' Draco had promised.

"Harry!" Gabrielle Delacour cried. "It has been too long, _cheri_!" She hugged him hard, kissing him firmly on both cheeks and then softly on the mouth. " _Mon Dieu_ , but I barely recognised you! Have you become a master of disguise as well as everything else?"

"I'm all sorts of impressive, Gabbi." Harry allowed. "How have you been? How's Doug?"

"Douglas?" She raised an eyebrow. "We parted ways some time ago, Harry. You should keep in touch, more.

"Come, you must meet our security man. Clark, _mon vieux_ , this is the infamous Harry Potter! Harry, my old comrade in arms, Clark Kent."

Harry had heard of, but never met, Dracos' former team mate, now a SHIELD instructor. Clark Kent was not a tall man, but stocky and powerful. Olive-skinned, with dark hair and a square-jawed, handsome face, he wore dark glasses, which Harry knew in his case was not an affectation. The hand that was proffered, along with a monosyllabic greeting, was easily twice the size of Harrys', and extremely strong.

"So you're here to look after me?" Harry asked.

"I'm here to look after the files, mostly." Kent replied in a soft bass voice. "But if you do feel the need for some muscle, let me know."

Gabbi showed Harry his bedroom, the drawers and wardrobe filled with medium price but good quality clothing – both muggle and wizard - that matched his cover. Then they had lunch. Gabbi was voluble and Kent was taciturn. Harry said little as well, but the vivacious French witch only needed an audience, so she didn't mind.

Harry took the time to measure the 'help' Draco had sent him. Both had been members of the SHIELD Special Unit Draco had led for some years with the aim of uprooting HYDRA influence in the wizard world, and both had now gone on to other things.

Clark Kent had arrived on Earth as a teenager after being sent away from his plague-ridden homeworld. He had been adopted by a childless couple in rural Kansas with the blessing of UNIT and at the insistence of the Doctor (another old friend of Harrys'). UNIT had also funded the adjustments to his alien physiology Kent had needed to live a normal life on Earth. When he had grown up, he had joined the US Navy, eventually being admitted to the elite SEAL force. After several successful tours, he had been recruited into SHIELD and now worked as an instructor at the SHIELD Elite Academy. Draco had described him as 'a man of limited conversation, but unlimited resource and loyalty'.

Of course, Harry had known Gabrielle Delacour since she was a child. The younger sister of Fleur Delacour Weasley, Bills' wife, Gabbi had been Fleurs' objective in the Second Task of the Triwizard Tournament. When Fleur had been caught by the Grindylows Harry had, in a fit of what Dumbledore had called 'moral fibre' but which Harry himself now allowed to be naivete, 'rescued' her as well as his own objective, Ron. The result had been that both sisters had developed a soft spot for Harry and Ron. Gabbi was still very like her older sister, but while Fleur had developed into a sensuous matron, Gabrielle, while still womanly in her figure, was athletic and well-muscled. There was also more than a hint of steel in her glance. Both women still had the extra allure imparted by their Veela grandmother. Having failed to be accepted as an Auror, due to her Veela blood, by the Bureau des Sorcieres, Gabrielle had been recruited by WAND -the magical division of SHIELD – before being seconded to Dracos' team. She was now back at WAND as Deputy Director (Operations) working with Draco.

The fact that Draco had taken care to provide Harry with agents he personally knew and trusted said a lot about the potential depth of the problems they faced.

Eventually, they couldn't put it off any longer. The back room of the house had been converted into a makeshift office. There was a laptop computer, a latest-model scrying glass with full connectivity and a mass of documents – some so old they were still on parchment.

"Oliver has access to everything, as Secretary." Gabrielle noted. "If he chooses to remove documents for 'audit', nobody can stop him. But we cannot keep them for too long. We had best begin, Harry!"

It quickly became clear that most of the documents were of little or no value. The ones from the Fudge era were mostly to do with individual wizards caught practising the Dark Arts – though there were several that Harry knew to be whitewashes designed to cover up or deny continuing or resurgent Death Eater activity.

The documents from Scrimgeours' time, on the other hand, were a study in institutional paranoia, focused on weeding out anyone who might possibly once have said something not entirely unkind about Voldemort. Denunciations were common, and apparently acted upon without supporting evidence.

Files from the Thicknesse period were the same, but in reverse. Lists of muggle-born wizards to be accused of magic theft. Lists of Half-bloods who might be descended from muggle-borns. Lists of Purebloods who had made 'inappropriate' marriages. A mass of documents detailing the incredibly mundane activities of wizards whose loyalty was suspect (almost everybody Harry knew or had known). Thick, and almost wholly inaccurate, dossiers on himself, Ron and Hermione, as well as Rons' family. Details of a long and unsuccessful search for Hermiones' parents. Many of them over the signature of one Secretary Dolores Umbridge.

Still, it took much of the afternoon and evening, with a hasty dinner, to sort out what might or might not be relevant.

"We'll tackle that lot tomorrow!" Harry decreed. "I don't know about anyone else, but my brain hurts!"

"It does?" Kent asked, straight-faced. "The Boss used to say you didn't have one!"

"I used to say the same about him, and I'm still not convinced." Harry retorted. "Gabbi, can you call Oliver in the morning and tell him he can take the ones we don't need back? I'm for my bed!"

Harry was just about to drift off when the door opened quietly. Gabrielle slipped through it, dropped the gossamer wrap she was wearing, climbed in beside him and snuggled close.

"Why Harry," she murmured, "do you take your wand to bed, or are you just pleased to see me?"

"Shut up." He said, and kissed her.

"I should," Percy Weasley growled, "have been informed!"

"I am informing you." Ernest Macmillan said reasonably. "It was sheer accident we spotted him at all. One of my people happened to be in the shop while he was buying a present for his wife."

"That isn't what I meant, Ernest." Percy replied. "And I'm not taking anything away from your people, it was a good catch. I meant I should have been told, by Director Malfoy, that he was going to be in the country!"

"Why?" Dean Thomas asked. "He may live in Connecticut now, but his son and daughter-in-law, and their children, live here. He has a right to visit. He's also still a British citizen, so doesn't need a visa."

"What Minister Weasley means," Jeremiah Fudge put in, "is that for the Director of WAND to come to the UK without giving prior notice to the Ministry of Magic is a serious breach of protocol!"

"He didn't inform UNIT, either." Ernest pointed out. "He and Mrs Malfoy came in via Heathrow airport, on a muggle plane, and gave the reason as a family visit. We'd have known about it earlier if Dean hadn't told us to step down observation at muggle hubs."

"We're not interested in muggle terrorists and drug smugglers." Dean said sharply. "Thule operatives would Floo, Apparate or Portkey in. They have no contact with muggles and no muggle money or resources. Monitoring airports, ports and railway stations was just one more of Shacklebolts' wastes of time and effort.

"In any event, Percy, Draco Malfoy doesn't have to give you notice unless he's coming in an official capacity. And he's under no obligation to stroke your ego, mate!"

"It is not helpful," Jeremiah said sententiously, "for members of this Cabinet to fail to address the Minister correctly, and with due respect."

"Oh, bollocks." Dean told him. "I'm not limber enough to get my head that far up my arse, and I'm too fastidious to stick it up Percys'! If you don't like it, get yourselves another Head of Enforcement!

"C'mon Ernest, some of us have got work to do!"

"Relax, Jeremiah," Percy said as his Foreign Secretary glared after the departing wizards, "Thomas just does it to wind you up!"

Fudge shook his head. "He doesn't belong here!" He said plaintively. "Neither of them do, Minister! Macmillan's a Pureblood, of course, but he's a Hufflepuff! Born to be a clerk, a junior manager at best, not a leader! As for Thomas, the man doesn't even know who his father was! Our world is going to Tartarus on a broomstick!"

"Give it time, Jeremiah, give it time!" Percy soothed. "We need them both for now. It's going to take years to sort out the mess Shacklebolt and my sister-in-law made!

"Once we've got Thule under control, and we've cut off all those unnecessary links with muggles, we can make the right kind of changes. I've got my eye on Scorpius Malfoy to replace Thomas in a year or two. What d'you think!"

"A Weasley promoting a Malfoy?" Fudge laughed. "I think that will make the history books, Minister, if nothing else you do will!" He turned serious again. "You didn't mention Potters' role in wrecking our world?"

Percy snorted. "Harry Potter was the pawn of a prophecy – he had no more choice in what happened than You-Know-Who did! If he'd died at that last battle, the way fated heroes are supposed to, it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference!

"No, the real source of trouble is Hermione Granger. The clever little mudblood who directed everything Harry and my idiot brother have done since the war! She even got her hooks into Shacklebolt – he was a good man before she got at him. All her ideas about civil liberties, equal rights for Goblins, Centaurs, House-elves and the rest. Outlawing discrimination based on bloodline -utter nonsense! In one lifetime, she's done more damage to our world than You-Know-Who did in two!

"She thinks I don't know. But she'll slip up one day, overreach herself. Then, Jeremiah, there will be a reckoning!"

Harry woke to find Gabbi resting on one elbow and looking down at him pensively.

"What happened between you and Ginny?" She wanted to know.

"Lifestyle expectations." Harry said simply. "Ginny loves attention. Youngest child, only daughter, she got a lot of it at home, you know. When we were going out together at school, all the other girls wanted to know all about it, and she wasn't averse to spinning the odd tall tale. Told them I had a tattoo of a dragon on my chest!

"Then after the War, Kingsley drafted Ron, Neville and I into the Aurors for a year to help with the clean-up, and Ginny wasn't finished school. As soon as she had, of course, she joined the Harpies. I never found out until later that she'd hoped that, after a year in the Aurors, I'd go into professional Quidditch. But I'd wanted to be an Auror for a long time, so I stayed on.

"Of course, people were still making a fuss about me back then. The Chosen One, the Master of Death, and so on. But Ginny was making a big splash in Quidditch as well. I used to go with her to the parties and events as well as the matches, to support her. I wanted her to have her own reputation, her own career, not just be an appendage to me. But it was a mistake, because the magazines and so on started all this 'Golden Couple' stuff. Ginny played up to it, but I wanted to play it down.

"It wasn't so bad for a bit after she stopped playing. We agreed that we needed to concentrate on being parents and give the children a normal life at first. But after Lily went to Hogwarts, Ginny started to push herself out again. First Quidditch commentator on Wizard TV, then she got her own chat show. Fine by me, as long as I could stay in the background.

"But that wasn't good enough for Ginny. She wanted me to give interviews, do guest slots, authorise a biography or write one myself. She said people were forgetting about me, and couldn't understand why I wanted them to. On top of that, even though I was Head of Magical Enforcement by then, she kept saying I should be Minister. She kept digging up bits of gossip about Kinsgsley and egging me on to use them to get rid of him and take over. There were a lot of rows. That's when she started having affairs, I think. One kind of frustration led to another, I suppose.

"Of course, when it all blew up, and I got fired, it was the last straw. Ginny told me she didn't want to stay married to a man whose ambition was to be a nobody, and she walked out. By that time, I wasn't sad to see her go, either."

" _Eh bien,"_ Gabbi said, "such things happen, no? At least it has allowed me to fulfil a lifetime's ambition, _cheri_!"

A pattern began to emerge.

"Look," Harry said, "I'm remembering this, now. The first Draupnir intel started coming in about two years after we destroyed the Scholomance, and a year after DuMorne escaped. It was good stuff at first, as well. Helped us put a stop to Regius Fitzmalfoys' New Death-Eaters, and the Brotherhood of the Rising Star."

"Never heard of them." Gabbi remarked.

"Muggle-born fanatics." Harry told her. "Wanted to purge the 'inbred, aristocratic Pureblood elite' and bring true democracy to the wizard world. Poor Hermione was top of their hit-list for 'collaboration with the old order'."

"A little irony is, how do you say it, good for the blood, no?" Gabbi commented.

"So they say." Harry allowed. "But the key thing I'm noticing here is that all the early Draupnir intelligence is corroborated by other sources -established ones."

"What," Kent asked, "is a Draupnir, exactly?"

"According to Norse mythology," Harry told him, "it's a golden ring – an arm-ring, mind – that was made for Odin by the Dwarfs who made Thors' hammer, Mjolnir. Every ninth night, it's supposed to 'drip' eight rings of equal weight. Thor told me once that rings of that kind do exist in Asgard, but that they're actually communication devices, linked in groups of nine, with the 'parent' ring able to monitor the other eight."

"Useful." Kent remarked. "Either makes you rich, or keeps you in touch."

"Harry," Gabbi said, "I have something here. Soon after the Draupnir operation began, there were rumours from other sources that the Black Council had re-emerged. Corroboration was sought, but could not be found. Draupnir, in particular, was quite certain such a body did not exist. The matter was reported to the White Council, but marked low priority and left."

"Well, it's a start." Harry allowed. "Keep digging. Clark, if you're not going to help with the files, at least make a cup of tea, will you?"

It became clear that Draupnir had risen in importance after the collapse of HYDRA. The numerous tentacles of that operation had either died or mutated into something else once the main body was gone. As an unexpected result of this, many formerly reliable sources had gone dark. By that time, Percy Weasley – Head of Home Affairs at that time – had joined with Jeremiah Fudge and Dean Thomas -who was then Rons' deputy at the Auror Division -to form the Jormungand Group.

The Group appeared to have two main purposes. Firstly, to halt and if possible reverse some of the 'modernisation' that had taken place since the War and which they felt was destabilising wizard society. Secondly, to remove Kingsley Shacklebolt and replace him with either Percy or Fudge. Sole access to Draupnir, now a major source, gave them a good deal of leverage. Shacklebolt, however, had continued to insist that Draupnir intel had to be corroborated by other sources or investigations before action was taken.

Then there was a blank period in the records, where only the most ordinary and sketchy of reports existed. It coincided with the events that had triggered Kingsleys' removal and the forced resignations of Harry, Ron and Hermione.

After that, the tone changed. Draupnir intelligence was to be considered definitive, and now information from other sources had to be confirmed by Draupnir before being acted on. Routine, informal contacts between Ministry employees and muggle agencies such as UNIT, MI5, MI6 and Special Branch were stopped and replaced by formal and infrequent liaison meetings. The Auror Division was downsized, and action against individuals practising the Dark Arts was only to be taken if actual criminal activity involving harm to others was proved. At the same time, the Whitelighters were increased, and a programme of intensive surveillance initiated, mostly targeting politically-active muggle-borns and known proponents of modernisation.

There was also a massive and continuing internal inquiry into the activities of Harry and his friends, with a specific emphasis on any and all actions undertaken by Hermione, described as "a woman whose political tendencies would be considered subversive even among her muggle family".

More importantly, this was the time in which reports of the activities of the New Thule Society began to emerge. Unsupported by any other sources, these were nonetheless prioritised because they came from Draupnir. But, oddly, few if any successes had been recorded against this organisation. Most of the reports credited terrorist actions or the loss of agents or important information to Thule _ex post facto._ Preventative intelligence was thin to the point of non-existence.

It was over dinner that Clark finally stated the obvious. "You do know, Harry, that the pivot of all this is Minister Shacklebolt being removed, and you and your friends getting fired? What actually happened there?"

Harry shook his head. "I've wondered about this for years, actually." He admitted. "It's not something we talk about – it upsets Hermione and makes Ron angry, so…."

"Look, there was a muggle politician, married to a witch, no problem usually, as long as it was kept quiet, which it was. Everyone in the muggle world thought she was a muggle, just as they're supposed to. But they were both murdered, obviously by a wizard. Kingsley sent me to look into it in case it was down to blood-purity or separatist fanatics. Turns out it was her wizard ex-boyfriend who couldn't let go. Meanwhile, Ron was with the Avengers, dealing with a Dire Wraith incursion – they still happen sometimes.

"Then the three of us get a crash call from Kingsley. Neville was in trouble in Budapest. We shot over there fast. Ron had his suit on, and was able to use its' locators to find Neville. We went in heavy and got him out. Whoever was in charge there did a runner as soon as we appeared and we had to kill the others. Poor Neville was in a Hell of a mess, he'd been tortured. 'Mione patched him up as best she could, but he wasn't fit to Apparate or even Portkey – magical travel can be rough – so I had to Orb us back to the Ministry.

"But when we got there, we were surrounded by Whitelighters who took Neville away. When we got to our desks, there were letters there from Percy Weasley – Interim Minster of Magic, he signed himself – along with letters of resignation for each of us. We were told that if we signed them then and there, we'd have an hour to clear our desks and leave. If we refused, we would be dismissed and escorted off the premises immediately. We were also told that if we ever, in any capacity, attempted to contact Kingsley or Neville again, we would be arrested on the spot, as we no longer had Top Secret clearance. We were never debriefed, or anything.

"Kingsley died a month or so later. I'd known his health was failing, but not how badly."

"So, you never found out why Neville – who is a teacher, not an Auror, was in Budapest, or why Kingsley sent him there?" Gabbi asked.

Harry shook his head.

"Well," Clark said, "strikes me that you've got all you're goin' to get out of the files, pal. Time to go talk to people. Shame you can't talk to this Kingsley guy."

"Hmm," Harry mused, "you know, I think I just might…."


	3. Chapter 3

**Keeper, Beater, Seeker, Spy**

 **Chapter Three**

By means of an ancient enchantment, the portrait of a current or former head of Hogwarts School will appear, at the moment of his or her death, in the Heads' Study. There the magical portraits, each endowed with the personality and accumulated memories of its subject, are expected to advise and support the current Head.

A similar enchantment was laid on the Ministry of Magic, whereby the portrait of each former Minister, at their passing, was to appear in the Long Gallery which at that time formed the only access to the Ministers' office. Sometime in the 19th Century, however, the then Minister decided to relocate his office two floors up and at the other end of the building. Notwithstanding, the portraits of former Ministers duly appear in the Long Gallery upon their deaths, though the Gallery now leads to nothing but a storeroom for old portraits -some so faded they can barely speak.

In front of the newest portrait – that of the late Kingsley Shacklebolt – a figure appeared, apparently out of thin air.

"Hello, Harry." Kingsley said. "I did wonder if you'd eventually stop by. Though one o'clock of a winter's morning is hardly the time for socialising."

Harry shrugged. "True, Kingsley. But I can't just walk into the Ministry any more, you know!"

He studied the portrait. This wasn't Kingsley as Harry had last seen him – frail, thin, racked with a persistent cough. This was Kingsley in his prime, in his Aurors' robe, his voice deep, slow and rich as in the old days.

"Well, Harry, that's mostly down to me, I admit. But you bear your share of the blame as well!" Kingsley said.

"How so?" Harry asked.

Kingsley shrugged. "You're pig-headed bugger, mate! You wouldn't leave Enforcement, would you? Three times I asked you when you wanted to take over from me, and you mumbled something about me having years left in me, or you outright deafed me.

"So then I thought I'd promote you. Move you to Home or Foreign, let Ron take over Enforcement. Then maybe he'd be prepared to succeed me. But you wouldn't move. So I tried to promote Ron, but he's as bad as you are and stayed put as well. If you'd just done as I – and practically everybody else -wanted and expected you to do, we wouldn't be here now!"

Harry shook his head. "You know damned well I never wanted to be Minister, Kingsley! Hell, I didn't even want to be Head of Enforcement. I'd have been happy to stay an ordinary Auror or Whitelighter, out in the field, doing some good, for my whole life! It's not like I needed the money or anything.

"The only other job I ever wanted was to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts, and Aurora's as good as told me that when she retires next year, Jessica will offer me the job. Percy, on the other hand, always wanted to be Minister.

"But that's not what I came about. I need to know what happened, Kingsley. How it all went sideways."

"Why now, after so long?" Kingsley asked bitterly. "Curiosity finally got the better of you? You were quicker off the mark in the old days, Harry."

"Because I thought it was politics, and wanted no part of it!" Harry snapped. "There was something I didn't know back then. Something I'm not sure anyone knew. Something a young Auror found out almost by accident. There's a mole, Kingsley, a mole in the Ministry. High up and deep in. Oliver's asked me to find them, and everything I've found so far points to that time as being pivotal.

"But the records are sketchy or non-existent. Why was Neville in Hungary? What was he doing for you there? Why didn't Ron and I know about it until it was too late?"

Kingsleys' eyes widened. "I was right, then!" He said. "Not that that helps now, but still, it's nice to know I wasn't losing it." He shook his head. "Look, Harry, you didn't see everything I saw, you understand? I had my own sources, just as you had yours – that's the way the game works.

"Things were going wrong, Harry. Not big things that everyone would notice, but little things. Operations that caught minnows, while the shark slipped away. Sources that dried up. People that were useful to us suddenly got moved on, or simply resigned or were fired. It took me ages to see the pattern, but it was there. Everything that went wrong had something to do with someone who'd been connected to the Scholomance or to the wizards who'd been part of it.

"The other thing was that only someone in the Ministry could have known about the sources, the operations, the agents of influence. So, yes, I knew there was a mole. So, I started to dig. Little by little, nothing obvious, just lifting stones to see if anything crawled out from under them."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Harry asked. "I would've helped."

"Why didn't you tell me about Draco Malfoy?" Kingsley shot back. "Why didn't you tell me you sent the Elder Wand to Warehouse 13?"

Harry closed his eyes, "Because you could have been a HYDRA agent, for all I knew." He admitted.

"Exactly!" Kingsley said. "And for all I knew, you could have been the mole! You were always my best man, Harry. Both of us did exactly what the other would have done in the same circumstances.

"But my search turned up something. A potential defector – a Czech wizard -who said he had information about an agent in place in the Ministry. He wanted to meet in Budapest to set up safe transport to London before his bosses got to him.

"My first instinct was to send you, but I didn't want to risk it in case…well we've discussed that. Ron, or indeed any of the Aurors or Whitelighters, were out for the same reason.

"But then there was Neville. Under that mild-mannered academic thing he's got going, Harry, he's a lot like you. Determined, tough, clever and he's almost as skilled a wizard as you. And of course, he doesn't know the meaning of fear. So I asked him to go.

"But something went wrong, I don't know what. All I know was that Dean Thomas called me up in the middle of the night to ask if I knew what Neville Longbottom was doing in Budapest. Then Percy was there – Flooed right in without asking – and wanted to know why I'd put relations with the Hungarian Ministry at risk? I asked what he was talking about and he said I'd sent you, Ron and Hermione on an unauthorised mission to retrieve a kidnapped tourist and that you'd used lethal force outside your jurisdiction. He was threatening the three of you with Azkaban when his mirror went off. I don't know who it was, he left the room, but he'd lost some of his bluster when he came back. He said he had to go and sort out the mess, and I wasn't to leave the house. Two hours later I got the letter from the Wizengamot saying they accepted my resignation 'for reasons of health' and that I wasn't to contact any of you ever again.

"How did you find out about Neville? And how did you stay out of Azkaban?"

"That's the only thing I was sure about at the time." Harry told him. "It was Charles Xavier. He's spent years building a network of Psykers all over the world. One of them 'heard' Neville being tortured and passed the word along to Charles, who contacted us.

"As to Azkaban, that call Percy got was from Ororo Howlett, Director of Avengers Branch. Ron was still on the active roster then, and she reminded Percy that the Avengers – as a group or as individuals – have global jurisdiction. She also pointed out that as members of UNIT, Hermione and I also had world-wide authority to use 'all means necessary'. It was stretching things a bit, as Hermione was only a Special Magical Advisor, but even Percy isn't daft enough to go head-to-head with Storm!

"Thanks for this, Kingsley, it'll help a lot. And I'm sorry I didn't come and see you before. I suppose I just didn't have the nerve!"

Kingsley actually laughed. "You're not a schoolboy any more, Harry! The days when you'd have risked arrest just to chat with an old friend are long gone! But once you've put things right again, don't be a stranger, mate!"

Tyler was enjoying a cup of tea and a chat with Professor Longbottom. This wasn't a regular thing, Tyler rationed his visits here, realising that the Professor was busy, and that he himself needed to make more of an effort with his House-mates.

"I didn't realise," he was saying, "that I wasn't helping myself. Going out for those walks made the others think I was standoffish. Also, the fact that my magic can be a bit strong scared some of them. But it's a lot better now."

"You've acquired some pals?" Neville asked.

"Yup." Tyler answered. "I've been hanging out with Liam and Gomez Potter, Drusilla Malfoy – though she's in Slytherin – and your grandson, sir!"

"What? Young Frank?" Neville grinned. "Keep an eye on him, boy can't stay out of trouble!"

"Chip off the old block, sir?" Tyler asked.

Neville gave a mock sigh. "Young people nowadays! Where's the respect? Have another biscuit, lad, they won't eat themselves!"

Then there was a completely unexpected tap on a nearby window. And quite suddenly, Professor Longbottom became…someone else. His habitual quizzical half-smile vanished as his mouth became a thin line, and the kindly eyes were suddenly filled with a cold ferocity.

With a gesture, he commanded Tyler to stay put, then he rose and went to the window, moving with a fluid precision despite his limp. He peered out for a moment, then half-laughed and relaxed before opening the window, quoting as he did so:

" _Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,_

 _In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;_ "

And indeed, a very large, very black raven did step in through the window, shook its feathers and fluttered over to the table.

"Tyler," Neville said, "this is Quoth, an old friend of an old friend. I'd offer him a biscuit, but he seems to have found them already.

"Are you here for a reason, Quoth, or is this just a social call?"

By way of answer, the raven extended a leg, to which a message capsule was attached. Tyler was slightly taken aback by this. Some students still got letters from parents by Owl post, but most nowadays relied on wizmail and mirror texts.

Neville read the message, and his face broke into a broad grin.

"Well, well!" He said. "Back to breaking the rules, are we? Things are starting to look up!" He glanced at Quoth who, having demolished his second Custard Cream, gave the appearance of waiting for a reply. "Tell him yes." Neville instructed.

"Yes." The raven croaked, then flew out of the window.

Neville watched him go, and shook his head as he closed the window. "I can never quite get over how bright that bird is." He allowed. "With an owl, I'd have had to send a note, but Quoth will just tell Harry yes, and that'll be it!

"Now then, Tyler, are you prepared to do me a favour?"

"Anything that doesn't have to do with girls, sir." Tyler told him.

"Girls? I thought you were friends with Drusilla?" Neville asked.

"Drusilla doesn't count." Tyler stated. "She's got a punch that would flatten a Troll and knows more swear-words than the rest of us put together!

"What do you need me to do, sir?"

"Be at the Quidditch pitch at a quarter to nine tomorrow night. Someone will arrive there – I don't know how, mind. Tallish chap, dark hair, green eyes, scar on his forehead. Don't ask him anything and don't tell him anything you don't need to – he won't ask. Bring him to the door you usually come in by, then cut along back to Gryffindor Tower and forget the whole thing, OK?"

"Will do, sir!" Tyler promised.

"Good lad!" Neville approved. "Now you'd best get going. At your age, I had better things to do than natter with old codgers!"

"True, sir," Tyler noted, "you still had Stonehenge to finish!"

He scuttled off without waiting for a response, leaving Neville grinning again. _Two smartarse comments in one night!_ He thought. _That lad will go far, unless somebody kills him first!_

The corridors that Harry had to traverse were thinly occupied even in the daytime -this area of the building was given over to storage and archives these days. By night, they should be deserted, which was why he stopped again and shed his Invisibility Cloak.

"You listened to me talking with Kingsley." He said. "That means you're curious. If you're curious, you're probably smart. If you're smart, you'll know who I am. If you know that, you must also know that your chances of taking me into custody are slim to none.

"But I only know a few people who could track me wearing this cloak, and none of them are wizards. So that begs the question, do you have any more right to be here than me?"

"Actually, yes." Replied a familiar voice as a figure stepped out of the shadows. "I work here!"

His fathers' white-blond hair and piercing grey eyes, his mother's stocky, powerful build. Harry took a step forward to receive a firm hug from his son-in-law.

"Hi Pop." Said Scorpius Malfoy. "What are you up to, or daren't I ask?"

"You know, you were listening." Harry told him. "How are Lily and the kids?"

"Same as always." Scorpius allowed. "Armand is still scoring more goals in Quidditch than he's getting marks in class. Drusilla is settling in well, hanging around with a bunch of Gryffindors, mind you, but the other kids daren't say anything. She's still the living spit of you, by the way. Kratos seems to be channelling his namesake – feisty little tyke - and Calliope is so cute it should be illegal. Lily has her hands full keeping us all in order, and loves every minute of it!

"I hope this doesn't mean you won't be coming over for Sunday lunch?"

"Oh, I'll be there, unless you arrest me!" Harry replied. "But how did you track me?"

"Oh, come on!" Scorpius said. "You trained Dad, and Dad trained me! Mind you, if I hadn't been in the lobby when you put on your little show…

"Little old lady comes into the lobby, all upset because she's lost her handbag with her Portkey ticket to go and see her grandkids in Australia. Everybody trying to help. Then somebody else comes along with a handbag he found and wants to hand in. Is it the right one? Yes it is. Is the ticket still in it? Yes it is! Hurray, hurray she can go to Australia and she doesn't care what people say, young folk nowadays are wonderful.

"By this time, everybody is earwigging in and nobody's watching the monitors. Except me, because this has Dads' handwriting all over it. I see a door into the old section open and close but nobody go through it. None of the Detectors have gone off, none of the Security Charms have been triggered, so somebody knows the system and has an invisibility device the Secrecy Sensors can't get past.

"So down I come, and I use this." He held up a small muggle device. "My own property because nowadays you have to fill in about thirty feet of parchment to get any kind of muggle tech issued. It's based on a Galadorian Energy Analyser and guess what? It can track Dark Energy, among other things. Dark Energy such as might be used by an ancient alien artefact passed down through the generations to a certain relative of my wife!"

Harry glanced at the cloak. "I suppose I ought to have handed it in to Torchwood long ago." He admitted. "But I have so little of or from my parents…."

"And it's a useful bit of kit!" Scorpius added. He gestured to a door. "Can we talk for a bit, Pop?"

The room was an archive, with a small desk and two chairs. "I've disabled security in here." Scorpius said, turning on the reading lamp. They studied each other.

"You look tired, son." Harry noted.

"Night shift." Scorpius explained. "You never quite get used to it, remember? You look better than you have in years, though.

"Anyway, I did hear what you were talking with Minister Shacklebolt about. We have a mole, it seems. I also infer that it had something to do with Mum and Dad coming over for a visit and not taking you out to dinner as they usually do. Dad said it was because we'd see you Sunday, but it never stopped them before. Then Dad goes out 'for a drink' with Oliver Wood. He's had official contact with Oliver before, but not social!

"I know there's something going on, and he knows I know. But I don't ask and he doesn't tell. That way I have deniability if it all goes South.

"Well, I'm a bit of a mole myself. I do what Dad told me to do after he and Mum moved. Keep my head down, obey orders, never express opinions and listen to everything. Then I report back to Dad on the QT. What that means is, of course, that the Minister likes me. He keeps buttering me up and commending me. Then he talks about how he and I both understand how important traditional values are. I think he wants me to replace Dean in time. He'll get a nasty surprise if he does. I can only handle so much compromise, especially after the way you and Dad and Uncle Ron and Aunt 'Mione fought to change things. If all else fails, I'll resign and join Lily at Torchwood. Aunt Luna keeps asking me to do that, anyway."

"Do you have any idea who the mole could be?" Harry asked.

Scorpius shook his head. "No, but something _is_ badly fucked up here, Pop.

"Look, Percy is scared. Not of anything specific, but just change. Uncle Ron once told me that Percy has done nothing all his life but follow the rules. But all the rules changed after the War. He'd been climbing the ladder nicely, then suddenly it changes into a greasy pole. He doesn't understand the new world, and he doesn't like it. All he wants is to go back to how things used to be. He blames Aunt 'Mione for most of it. Claims she's been manipulating you and Uncle Ron for years.

"Fudge is the same, because those were the days when his family had influence, and he wants that back, so he eggs Percy on and plays on his fears.

"Dean…it's hard to tell about Dean. He supported Percy over the Draupnir intelligence and over getting rid of Shacklebolt, but he doesn't seem to care for him or Fudge. He just wanted to be Head of Enforcement, I think. I know growing up wasn't easy for him, so maybe that has something to do with it.

"Ernie is the best of the bunch, but he just gets on with his job. Rumour has it that he's hanging on by his fingernails. I mean, he's bloody good at what he does, but some people don't think that Head of Whitelighters is a suitable job for a Hufflepuff. They reckon he belongs in Trade, or Muggle Affairs or Administration. His blood is all that's keeping him there, and the fact that Dean trusts him. Or it might be that Dean's got something on him, but what Ernie might have to be blackmailed with I couldn't even guess at!

"But these are the people in charge, Pop! If we don't do something, soon, things will go back to the way they were when you first started Hogwarts. Inward-looking, backward-looking, isolated and vulnerable! All the shit didn't go away with HYDRA, and there's Daleks and maybe worse than Daleks still out there in space. If the Kree or the Skrulls come knocking, wizards have to be ready to bear their part.

"But I'm preaching to the choir, here. I need to get back to work and you need to get the Hell out of here! Thanks for listening, Pop, and see you Sunday!"

When Draco had told Harry that he had a way to get them into Hogwarts undetected, Harry had assumed that Draco had either cleared one of the old secret tunnels, or requisitioned some high-tech SHIELD stealth gear. He had not expected…

"Bats?" He raised an eyebrow at Draco. "Giant bats? Won't the Growing Charm set the alarms off."

Draco laughed. "Did you ever read any of the reports I sent you, Harry? I know that was a long time ago, but…"

"Oh!" Harry started. "These are King-Bats?"

"Indeed." Draco nodded. " _Megachiroptera Pteropus rex_ , as conserved, bred and cared for by my friends the von Klorr family of Transylvania for centuries.

"This chap," he rubbed the head of the bat next to him, "is Golden Brush. I rode him when we infiltrated Castle Orlok to retrieve the Source-Blood from HYDRA. The creatures live up to sixty years, so Brush here is still in his prime. The grey over there is one of Brushs' offspring. Beowulf, out of Astarte by Golden Brush. As you can see, the saddle is designed for the rider to lie prone. The bat can be steered by the bridle, but is primarily trained to respond to verbal commands. Beowulf speaks excellent English, so you should be all right.

"One word of warning, Harry. These bats are diurnal fructivores. They do not have the echo-location common in smaller, predatory bats. They see well, and are trained in night-flying, but it behoves the rider to choose a safe path wherever possible. Stay high, above the trees. There is very little moon, so we are unlikely to be seen, and as the bats are in no way magical, we will be undetectable by other means."

The flight was brief, but enjoyable. Harry, an experienced flier of brooms, animals and planes, found flying the bat to be a unique experience. Not the headlong rush of a Thestral, or the contest of wills needed to control a Hippogriff. Beowulf was fast and steady, and responded promptly to Harrys' spoken commands.

They dropped onto the Quidditch pitch, under the shelter of the stands, where a chance observer from one of the towers would be unable to spot them. A small figure appeared from the players' entrance and gestured urgently.

"I will remain with the bats." Draco said. "Try not to be too long."

The small figure turned out to be a boy – a First Year by the look of him – in a Gryffindor scarf. He said nothing, just gestured for Harry to follow him. The route was circuitous - calculated, Harry realised, to avoid possible observation from the Castle – and led to the greenhouses. The boy stopped in front of a side-door that was slightly ajar, gestured for Harry to go in, and then took off in the direction of the school.

The magically-warmed and humidified air, the jumble of smells, the distant chatter of teenage mandrakes meeting for a party, the rustle and creak of some of the more lively plants. For a moment, Harry was overwhelmed with nostalgia.

 _Watch yourself, Potter!_ He told himself sharply. _This is business!_ He had no way of knowing how Neville might feel about his old friend after so many years of enforced silence, and his former class-mate was one of the few wizards Harry wouldn't care to cross!

Then a tall figure suddenly loomed in front of him, wand held pointing downwards, but firmly gripped for all that.

"The significant owl hoots in the night." He said.

"Yet many grey lords go sadly to the masterless men." Harry replied.

"Hooray, hooray for the spinster's sister's daughter." The figure remarked.

"To the axeman, all supplicants are the same height." Harry sighed.

"Yet verily, the rose is within the thorn." The other carried on.

"It's me, you bloody great arse!" Harry said, losing patience.

"Wondered how long it would take you." Neville said. "C'mon, I've made tea."

"You do realise," Harry pointed out as Neville led him to the snug corner with the chairs and table, "that all that sign and countersign went out in the 1950s' or so?"

"That's why I used it." Neville said. "We can't use all that digital stuff here, even if they'd let me have the kit – it's all I can do to scare up an old-fashioned CD player – and there still aren't that many wizards of our age who've read Terry Pratchett.

"You should've sent Ron. He and I could've used Masonic greetings."

"Don't want to bring Ron or 'Mione in on this." Harry admitted. "If I'm right, what I'm doing could bring the Ministry down and me with it. If that happens, they'll need people to put things back together again. Those two are the only ones who could, but they'll need to have clean hands to do it."

They sat down and looked hard at each other.

"You look a lot better than you did when I last saw you." Harry commented. "But why didn't the Healers do anything about that limp and the scar?"

"Because they're wizards." Neville pointed out. "All over magical injuries like a rash, but physical ones? _Pfft_! You've got magic, you can levitate things to you if it hurts to walk across a room! As for scars, badges of honour, of course. A muggle doctor could fix me up in a month, I imagine, but they won't let me anywhere near muggles anymore."

"I'm sorry I haven't tried to get in touch…" Harry began, but Neville stopped him with a wave.

"No need for that, mate." He said easily. "I was forbidden to contact you as well. I was being watched, so I took it you were, too. When I got your message, I assumed that the dragon dung had hit the ventilation charm, or you wouldn't have risked dropping us both in it by reaching out like that.

"Anyway, I knew a lot of what the rest of you were up to. They can't stop me seeing my kids and grandkids, for one thing. Hugo and Rebecca keep me up to date. Also, there's no plausible reason why Hannah and Hermione can't meet up for coffee and a gossip. I was sorry to hear about you and Ginny, though."

"These things happen." Harry allowed. "But I'm not just here for a catch-up. I'm looking for a mole, Neville. A deep-cover agent in the Ministry. Oliver Wood knows -or suspects – that there is one and I'm the only one they trust to dig them out. I've spoken with Kingsley – his portrait anyway -but I need you to tell me the rest of what happened in Budapest"

A bleak look came into Nevilles' eyes. "It's still hard to go back there." He said. "Hannah begged me to get obliviated, but that would've made it worse. At least I know how and where I came by the injuries. She understood that, and she's been my mainstay ever since.

"Kingsley got in touch and asked me to meet him at his home. He had a room there stuffed full of files, with charts on the walls. He'd worked out there was a mole, but didn't know who, but then he got a lead…"

"The Czech defector." Harry supplied.

"Yes, the _defector_." In Nevilles' mouth, the word was a snarl. "Anyway, Kingsley wasn't prepared to go through channels this time. He was worried that anyone he assigned would either be the mole or that the mole would find out about the job. He didn't want to use WAND or UNIT agents, or even White Council Wardens – he'd rather they didn't know the Ministry was leaky. So he co-opted me.

"I was to go to Budapest, meet the defector and debrief him, then get him out of there. Kingsley had set up an exit and signals. If the mole was one of a group of key people, I was to mirror text him one of the codenames we'd decided on. If they weren't in that group, then it could wait until I got back."

"Who were the key people?" Harry wanted to know.

"There was Percy Weasley -codenamed _Snitch_ ; Jeremiah Fudge – _Bludger_. Hermione was _Quaffle_ , Ernie Macmillan was _Beater_ , Dean Thomas was _Chaser_ , Ron was _Keeper_ and you were _Seeker_." Neville explained.

"Anyway, it all went as expected. I went to a dead-letter drop in Budapest that directed me to an abandoned warehouse where I was supposed to meet the defector. But lo and behold, the 'defector' was none other than our old pal, Cormac McLaggen! Along with a sizeable posse of wizards. It was a bit less large by the time I'd finished, but there were just too many and they captured me.

"Cormac wanted to know just how close Kingsley was to finding the mole, who the suspects were, and did he think the mole was working for Thule or the Black Council. I told him to go screw himself. He told his thugs to get the info out of me and buggered off. I guess he doesn't like to watch.

"They worked me over good and proper. I wasn't sure I could hold out much longer, then Ron blew the roof off! Doesn't do subtle, does he? The rest you know.

"Weird, I actually feel much better for telling you all this. I told the Whitelighters about the Czech defector, and said that Kingsley had asked me to go and fetch him because he was sick of Percy poking his nose into things and blocking those kinds of operations. You're the first person I've told it all to, Harry."

"Proper debriefing." Harry noted. "It helps a lot. Thanks, Neville."

"Thank you, Harry." Neville said sincerely. "It's been bloody good to see you, mate. Now bugger off and get this sorted, so you, me and Ron can go out and get ratarsed together again!"


	4. Chapter 4

**Keeper, Beater, Seeker, Spy**

 **Chapter Four**

Harry caught the look in Kents' eye when he got back to the safe house, so he was annoyed, but not surprised, to find Ron and Hermione in the work-room going through the files.

"How did you two find out?" He demanded.

Ron shook his head. "Do you honestly think that anything happens in the Ministry or the Wizengamot that I don't know about?" He asked in return. "I'm the CEO of Weasley Enterprises, mate. That muggle, Sun Tzu, he recommended finding out about the enemys' intentions 'by the expenditure of a few ounces of silver in honours and emoluments', and I can hand out honours and emoluments by the ton!"

"So the Ministry is your enemy?" Harry enquired.

"Every time they put up taxes, yes!" Ron said. "I've got folk depending on me for a living, and I have to make up what the government takes away."

"And as Head of Research and Development for WE," Hermione put in, "I have to keep an eye on what other people might be researching so that we can develop it first!"

"Industrial espionage, Hermione?" Gabrielle asked.

"You might say that, but I couldn't possibly comment." Hermione replied. "Besides Harry, if you wanted to keep us in the dark, you shouldn't have come to dinner the other night. You were happier than you've been in years, so we both knew you were up to _something_!"

"All we had to find out was what." Ron went on. "Then it was just a matter of arranging leave of absence. Easy when you're the boss. Somebody has to watch your back while you're watching Clark and Gabbis'."

" _We're_ supposed to protect _him_." Kent noted.

Hermione gave short laugh. "You probably are, but that won't stop him from trying to protect you. Besides, we're here to protect Harry from his most dangerous enemy!"

"Voldemort is dead." Gabbi pointed out.

"Harry isn't," Ron told her, "and _our_ job's always been to protect the daft bugger from himself!"

"Thank you for that vote of confidence." Harry gave up. "Have you found anything out?"

"Quite a bit." Hermione allowed. "But how it all fits together will be for my better half to noodle out!

"To start with, Draupnir isn't just one source, but several, reporting through a single conduit. The intelligence comes from all over Europe, you see, but it seems to be collected through regular meetings with a contact in London. It seems that once a month either Percy, Jeremiah or Dean – whoever happens to have time - meets up with Draupnir to collect the take. I can't find out where, but there are occasional references to a safe house.

"The first Draupnir intel -it wasn't called that then – came in during 2018. It came via Jeremiah at the Foreign Office in a memo to Kingsley and Percy. He said it was from an 'independent source' and he couldn't vouch for the reliability, but it was corroborated by other sources that were reliable. After that, more came in, dribs and drabs at first, until 2023."

"That was the year we took down HYDRA." Harry noted. "A lot of our sources dried up after that."

Ron nodded. "Made sense. Like I said at the time, some of the HYDRA people we didn't get moved into other organisations and used what they'd been taught to tighten up security. Lucky for us that SPECTRE sucked up a lot of them. They don't do politics, just money."

"And others went to Latveria, of course." Hermione added. "Where Doom doubtless found some of them gainful employment and recycled the rest as dog food. Or whatever the Latverian equivalent of Soylent Green is."

"You have a ghoulish imagination, dearest." Harry told her. "I doubt even Doom would go that far! He offered me a job after we got sacked, you know."

"Sweet of him." Hermione said dourly. "Mind, he probably sensed a kindred spirit!

"Anyway, after the dust settled, Draupnir started to come through with a lot more stuff. That's when it got code-worded and Dean was put in charge of it."

"It was time to give him a step up." Harry recalled. "Percy and Jeremiah wanted to stay involved, and I saw no reason they shouldn't, and they both agreed to work with Dean. Worked out nicely. Too nicely, it turns out."

"Um." Ron grunted. "Thing is, with the benefit of hindsight and a little distance, I managed to figure out what was wrong with the Draupnir take. It kept us from making big mistakes, allowed us to clear agents before they were blown and close down cells of terrorists and subversives. But it never gave us anything big. It let us think that the main danger, the organised threat, had gone with HYDRA. But at the same time it kept us chasing small game and moving agents around before they could really start to produce. Basically, we were being kept off-balance."

"It also distracted us from other things." Hermione went on. "Other sources that we still had, and were saying different things. It took a long while, because everyone was running about following Draupnir leads. But eventually, people started to put things together. Small things that were happening while we were looking the other way.

"People dropping off the grid – people we'd been watching hard at one time, but slackened up on because Draupnir said they were harmless. Money collecting in odd places. A lot of Dark Market activity – illegal potion ingredients and dangerous or cursed items moving about, then vanishing. It all pointed to an organisation or movement. Very low-key, very discreet, but there.

"But nobody took it too seriously until some people were murdered. People with connections to the Ministry, or the Wizengamot, or even the White Council. At which point, out of nowhere, Draupnir comes up with the New Thule Society, picking up where Grindelwald left off. Except that the only source that talks about New Thule is Draupnir."

"It's too convenient." Ron stated. "Almost as if Draupnir knew what we were thinking and came up with a suitable answer, just at the right moment."

"Are you suggesting, in your Weasleyish fashion," Harry ventured, "that the mole and Draupnir are connected?"

"Like Siamese twins!" Ron said. "It has to be a two-way flow, Harry. Except what we get from Draupnir is…what…chickenfeed? But whoever is running Draupnir is getting pure gold!"

"But that still leaves the question of who's running the mole." Harry pointed out. "I was starting to think Draupnir invented New Thule as a blind, but it could be a double bluff. On the other hand, there could be something in this whole Black Council thing.

"Either which way, I have to go and talk to some people. People in the States. And since I can't Orb, and I daren't take a commercial Portkey or public Floo, I'm going to have to Apparate."

"Which every Auror and Whitelighter in the Home Counties will hear you doing!" Ron said flatly. "Don't be a plonker, Harry! It's just the sort of thing they're watching you for.

"We can spend some more time on these files tomorrow, then have Sunday lunch at Scorpius and Lilys'. I can arrange a flight for Monday morning. Then while you're doing the rounds over there, 'Mione and I can carry on with this little lot!

"But right now, it's getting late, so we're off back to the holiday cottage!"

They said goodnight. Hermione hugged Harry tighter than normal as she kissed his cheek. "It's good to have the old firm back together." She told him.

"What was that?" Harry asked. "The old and infirm, did you say?"

"Speak for yourself, you old codger!" She replied, the turned to Clark and Gabbi. "See that he doesn't stay up all night!" She commanded.

"I will tuck him in myself." Gabbi promised.

"I'll just bet you will!" Hermione said. "When you get to bed, Harry, remember to sleep as well as everything else!"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean!" Harry protested.

Harry wasn't surprised to find himself on the helipad of Stark London that dark Monday morning. The commercial relationship between Stark International and Weasley Enterprises was almost as close as the friendship between the Stark and Weasley families. He was rather taken aback, however, by the aircraft that dropped almost silently out of the murk. He'd been expecting a helicopter ride to a Stark facility outside London, a transfer to an executive plane and a comfortable flight over the Atlantic.

Instead he found himself staring at the unique profile of an Avengers' quinjet. A rather more welcome surprise was the Amazonian figure that awaited him at the head of the boarding ramp.

"Uncle Harry!" She cried in a pleasant, rather husky, voice, and as soon as he came within reach, she swept him into a crushing hug.

Rose Granger-Weasley stood only a couple of inches shorter than her father -two inches taller than Harry - and was built on similar lines. Not that she looked in any way masculine, even though her flame-red hair was cut in a shortish bob. Her features were softer than Ron's, but she had his piercing blue eyes and iron muscles, as well as his ebulliently affectionate nature.

"Hello, Rosie!" Harry said when he could breathe again. "Lovely to see you, pet, but don't say Ororo sent the Silver Sorceress all the way over here just to give me a lift?"

"Oh, she would've, if Dad had asked." Rose said. "But Johnny and I were over here anyway, giving UNIT a hand with a stray Cyber Converter that AIM were trying to get their paws on! They suspected either MODOK or WODOK might be leading the AIM force, but it turns out neither of them were there. So when Dad got in touch with Uncle Tony to ask for a lift across the pond for you, Uncle Tony told Howard, who asked Ororo, and she re-tasked us.

"Johnny, Uncle Harry's here!"

Roses' Avengers team-mate and long-term boyfriend, Johnny Richards, stuck his handsome blond head around the co-pilots' seat and gave Harry a wide smile.

"Hey, Uncle Harry, you good?"

"For my age." Harry allowed. "How's your Gran?"

"Pretty good, now she and Steve can be together more." Johnny told him. "They said you're to come for dinner before you leave the States."

"C'mon." Rose said. "Let's get going. You want to have a go at flying this heap, Uncle Harry?"

"I'd love to." Harry admitted. "I still have my pilots' license, but I'm not rated for supersonic any more. You'll just have to do some work for a change, Rosie!"

"Geez, he doesn't let up, does he?" Johnny commented.

"No more than Mum and Dad do." Rose replied. "Been that way as long as I've known him.

"Right, first stop Chicago – somebody wants to meet with you there – then on to Arizona and Triskelion 2, then the North-West and hope you find who you're looking for!"

 _Funny how things turn out_. Harry thought to himself as he settled for the flight. Ron had been convinced that Rose had inherited Hermiones' brains because she had done better than him academically. Actually, she was entirely her father's daughter, with his keen analytical and tactical mind, but without the ADHD that had made Ron's schooldays so difficult until his growing closeness with Hermione had effectively neutralised it. Rose had also inherited Rons' physicality and combativeness. So when Ron stepped down from the Avengers in order to keep them untouched by the 'Shacklebolt Scandal' , it had been only natural for Rose to replace him, along with a newer version of the magical armour Arthur Weasley had designed and built.

There she had met Johnny Richards, son of Franklin Richards and his Inhuman wife Karilla. Like his father, Johnny was an Omega-level Mutant. His ability to 'shift' matter through time and space, as well as between states, had earned him the codename 'Quantum'. Johnny had been named for his great-uncle, Johnny Storm – the Human Torch – who had died along with his grandfather, Reed Richards, in the 2008 Dalek invasion.

 _Nothing ever turns out the way you think it will._ Harry decided. Which was not, in and of itself, a bad thing.

Cho Chang Westleigh ushered Ron into the bright, airy kitchen and provided him with a mug of tea and a plate of biscuits.

"David is playing golf, so he won't be back for yonks." She told him as she sat down. "Now, I had a good natter with Hermione only the other day, so I take it this isn't a social call.

"Is this something to do with Harry?"

"You still have a soft spot for him, don't you?" Ron asked.

Cho rolled her eyes and laughed. "Of course I do!" She answered. "He's The One That Got Away, isn't he? Seriously, though, after all he did – bringing poor Cedrics' body back, and all that other stuff – I can't help but think a lot of him. It was awkward when we split up, but we were teenagers then. We've always been friends as adults.

"So, what can I do?"

"You were at the Ministry, the night it all went West." Ron said. "None of us were, but we need to know exactly what happened. I can't tell you why, but it's important.

"D'you think you can remember?"

Cho laughed again, but not happily this time. "Apart from the Battle of Hogwarts, I don't remember anything half so well!" She stated.

"You remember how things were, Ron. Kingsley was ill -he never told anybody it was cancer – but he wouldn't resign because he couldn't find a successor. Harry wasn't interested, neither were you or even Ernie Macmillan. Meanwhile, Percy Weasley was snapping at his heels, pushing his anti-modernisation agenda, saying we were losing our wizard identity and wizard culture. I think he's just a nostalgia-freak, you know. But he had a lot of support, still does, in certain parts of our world, and being part of Jormungand, with all that Draupnir intelligence coming in, gave him a lot of leverage.

"Anyway, I was Hermione's deputy at Records and I was on night duty that week -we always had somebody in in case the files needed searching in hurry. Ernie was Duty Officer. Everything was quiet until a crash call came into the Mirror Room. It was a UNIT wizard in Budapest who told us that a British wizard had entered the country incognito and been kidnapped. They had a picture and Ernie recognised Neville.

"Ernie asked UNIT if they could get a location and started pulling a Whitelighter extraction team together. He also tried to call people in. You were away with the Avengers and we couldn't reach you. He tried Harry and got Ginny, who said he was out on a job. So Ernie carried on.

"But then Dean arrived, out of nowhere, and took charge -he was Head of Aurors by that time. He told Ernie that Neville was doing something illegal and was to be disavowed, and told him to stand the Whitelighters down. Ernie told him to go to Hell."

"How did Dean find out what was going on?" Ron asked.

"Buggered if I know!" Cho shrugged. "He was supposed to be on leave. He was ranting and raving at Ernie, telling him he had authority. Ernie told him that they were the same grade and that this was a Whitelighter job and if Dean wasn't going to help he could keep quiet or clear off!

"Then Percy and Jeremiah arrived. They dragged Dean and Ernie off into an office. We could hear shouting, then talking, then swearing. That was when the message came through that you three had gone in and hauled Neville out.

"Dean rounded up a bunch of Whitelighters and dashed off with them. Percy Apparated out somewhere. Jeremiah went off to his office. Ernie called us all into the big meeting room.

"He wasn't himself. He looked… _deflated_. He told us that Minister Shacklebolt had been running an unsanctioned operation involving a civilian, and that you three had exceeded your authority in an attempt to salvage it when it went wrong.

"In order to avoid a scandal, the Minister had resigned due to ill-health, and you three would be resigning to pursue other careers. We were asked to wait while you all cleared your desks -out of respect at a difficult time, Ernie said.

"That was it. We never saw Kingsley again, and he died a few months later. None of you were allowed to talk about it all, of course, and it was a while before any of us were allowed to go near you anyway. Then Percy was Minister of Magic, Penny Clearwater got Home Affairs and Dean got Magical Enforcement. They made Dennis Creevey Head of Aurors, but the gossip is that he's moving on soon and they'll give the job to Scorpius Malfoy. Ernie stayed put, but he was never happy about it.

"Does that help?"

"Yes." Ron said. "I'm not sure quite how, yet, but there's something there that's nagging at me. Thanks for this, Cho. I'm sorry I had to take you back there."

"Thank _you_ , Ron, it was a relief to get it all off my chest." Cho allowed. "And look, I know Percy's your brother and all, but if you're going after him for what he did to Harry, you'll have a lot of people cheering you on, including me!"

"Thanks, I think." Ron replied. "I'm afraid I've eaten all your biscuits."

"If I'd known _you_ were coming I'd've bought extra!" Cho was grinning now. "I swear I don't know how Hermione manages to keep you fed, you great lump!"

Chicago was colder, wetter and altogether more unpleasant than London, so Harry was more than happy to be quickly escorted into a warm, bright conference room where he was greeted with hot coffee and four familiar faces.

Colonel James Rhodes, Director of SHIELD, spoke without preamble.

"If what Draco tells me is true, Harry – and I've never known him be wrong when it mattered – then I'm glad you're here. If the British Ministry's been infiltrated, then it's possible that the FBS has too. If, as Draco suspects, the so-called Black Council is involved, we're gonna need everyone. So as of now, you've been restored to the active roster of SHIELD agents – not openly, but as a 'grey' operative. I'm also to tell you that your commission in UNIT has been quietly reactivated.

"Mr Dresden?"

Harry Dresden - known to British wizards as 'the other Harry' – was a very tall man with a lined, hangdog face and eyes that had seen far too much.

"The Black Council is something of a wizard legend, as you know, Harry." He said. "Some people date it back to the original White Council of the Third Age, claiming that Saurons' Nazgul were the original Black Council. That's crap, because the Nazgul had very little will of their own – not enough to start any councils.

"When Radagast the Brown reformed the White Council around 100 AD, rumours started about a Black Council straight away, of course. The Wardens have always kept an eye on them, and it's true that from time to time, groups of Dark wizards have gotten together and started calling themselves the Black Council. Usually, they break up because of infighting, but sometimes we've had to shut them down.

"We figure that after the Scholomance was taken down, it was Baron Mordo liberated Justin DuMorne. We have to assume that DuMorne had something that Mordo needed or wanted, or it wouldn't have happened. But we don't mess with Mordo -we leave that to Dr Strange.

"However it was, DuMorne's been off the grid ever since. I don't think he's gone into retirement – he's not the type. But rumours about a new Black Council have been floating around ever since 2023, and they're looking more solid as time goes on. For that reason, Harry Potter, you are hereby granted the status of White Council Warden, and by that authority, I am removing the Trace from your Whitelighter abilities. And putting it on the homunculus Draco has pretending to be you. No need to let everyone know right now."

"So as of now, I'm official?" Harry asked.

"Unofficially official." Rhodes clarified. "You still need to stay under the Ministry radar for now."

"Fair enough." Harry allowed, before turning to the two who hadn't yet spoken. "And why are you pair here?"

Ororo Monroe Howlett – codename _Storm_ – Director of Avengers Branch, was as agelessly lovely as she had been when Harry first met her. Elemental Mutants, he knew, enjoyed enhanced lifespans equal to those of wizards. Ororo must have been at least 55, but looked to be in her mid-thirties at most. The man next to her, her team-mate and second husband, was even older. Lt Col James Howlett, aka _Wolverine_ – Logan to old friends – was at least 200 years old, but had the appearance of a man in his prime and with his almost unlimited regenerative and healing powers, might never change.

It was Ororo who answered him. "Logistics, Harry. Logan and I came in another quinjet. I'll go back to New York with Rosie and Johnny. Logan will be your pilot and the only bodyguard who stands a faint chance of keeping up with you!"

"Oh." Harry said. "But now I can Orb again…"

"Not on your own, not where you're going!" Ororo said firmly. "Besides, non-magical transport will still be more discreet for you."

"Anyways," Logan put in. "You need to get into Tri-2, and even with your SHIELD status back, you don't got clearance for that place. You need me to get you in.

"You're also gonna need back-up in the forest. I can help you find your guy and back you up if things get unfriendly. Big Red is kinda unpredictable."

"And you're not?" Harry asked. "All right, all right. But just so we're clear, I'm not quite in my dotage. I can still handle myself."

"We know." Ororo said. "And Logan is the only one who might be able to handle _you_! Just try not to kill _too_ many people, guys!"

"OK, ok." Hermione was saying. "I can understand Percy turning up unannounced. He'd had people watching us and Kingsley for years. It got so we couldn't breathe without being accused of cosying up to muggles or Mutants. How many times did he demand Kingsley discipline you for going off with the Avengers without giving two weeks' notice?"

"About five." Ron told her. "Before I sat Percy down at Mums' one Sunday and explained that the Avengers' Charter grants full means and immunity to active members. He said that shouldn't count for wizards. I said that according to the Memorandum of Understanding between the White Council, SHIELD and UNIT, it did. He went on for five minutes about the Memorandum and the Council, he used a lot of words I didn't know he knew!"

Gabrielle giggled. "I cannot imagine Percy swearing! Bill and Fleur always say he has – what is the phrase – 'a broom up his bum'!"

"Personally," Hermione opined, "I think it's his head he's got up there! But that's beside the point. As I was saying, I'm not surprised Percy got alerted, nor am I surprised he brought Jeremiah along, they're as thick as thieves.

"But how did Dean find out? How did he get there before anyone else, apparently knowing what was going on?"

"That's easy." Ron said. "Same way Harry would've found out if I'd been there and he was on leave. There was a full night crew on, one of Deans' mates must have given him a call, like I'd have called Harry.

"What bothers me is that he either knew or assumed that there was a rogue op going on! I mean, Neville's a civilian, has been for years. I know he helped out on the Scholomance job, but that was because Ginny asked him. But he resigned from the Aurors after the years' draft was up and never looked back.

"Not that I'd put it past Neville to try to go it alone, if he had a good reason. He's got the balls for it, Jupiter knows! But as far as anyone there knew, he was just a British wizard who'd been travelling abroad and got kidnapped. We knew it was an op, because Charles told us and he would know.

"You don't disavow civilians, not ever!"

"But you do disavow rogue agents. Happens all the time." Kent said quietly. "Sometimes, you have to disavow legitimate ones."

"I know." Ron said. "Dean's done it before, and so have I, when it was necessary. Used to cause a row with Harry when I did. He's really into that 'no man left behind' style of thing."

Kent nodded. "Figures. Draco's the same way, but he calls it _noblesse oblige_. Always did talk funny."

"You were always a touch more ruthless than Harry, darling." Hermione remarked. "Makes you that bit more sexily dangerous, or dangerously sexy. Harry can be very rigid and upright, sometimes."

"This I have noticed." Gabrielle commented, causing Kent to choke on his coffee.


	5. Chapter 5

**Keeper, Beater, Seeker, Spy**

 **Chapter Five**

The Triskelion is, of course, the HQ building of SHIELD, situated on the outskirts of Washington DC. Triskelion 2, however, is something else. Located among the forests of the Colorado Plateau in North Central Arizona, it is a remote and monolithic-looking fortress perched on the edge of the forbidding escarpment known as the Mogollon Rim.

The visible structure is indeed a back-up HQ for SHIELD in case the Triskelion goes off-line. However, underground there is a network of tunnels and chambers extending for several miles. This complex is arguably the most secure prison in existence, said by its' warders to be able to securely house anything 'from rogue AI software to a hyperactive _daikaiju'_.

Of course, the Dalek invasion of 2008 had severely thinned the ranks of Mutants and Metahumans, both villainous and heroic, so Triskelion 2 was no longer as fully occupied as it once had been. The AI that was the core of Ultron was kept here. So were two gamma-mutated beings, Emil Blonsky – the _Abomination_ , and Samuel Sterns – the _Leader_. Wilton Fiske, the crime boss known as _Kingpin_ , resided here at the request of the Department of Justice. Several Dire Wraiths, both male and female, were here, as were a dozen Sontaran Troopers, at least three Cybermen, an alien cyborg that called itself 'Five of Seven' and, rumour had it, a single crippled but still-living Dalek.

Harry was not here to see any of these, however, but to renew an old but brief acquaintance. After passing several layers of increasingly hard security, he was delivered by TransMat into what seemed less a cell than a flat. The hallway had the feel of the _pied-a-terre_ of a sporting single gentleman of the 1920s and 30s, with its' oak-panelled wainscoting, wooden floor and the pictures – mostly of horses, dogs and hunting with both – that hung on the walls.

The figure that appeared from a doorway at the end of the hall matched the place well. Tall and thin, clad in a black smoking jacket, dark trousers, pristine white shirt and silk cravat. He was hairless, with heavy eyebrow ridges, deep-set piercing blue eyes, no nose and a lipless mouth. His skin was a deep red, gleaming faintly as if oiled.

" _Guten tag_ , Herr Potter!" The Red Skull actually seemed pleased to see him. "It has been some time since last we met."

"Dr Schmidt." Harry acknowledged. "Our last encounter was rather brusque, I'm afraid."

"The necessities of battle." The Skull acknowledged. "And you have been busy since. I understand entirely. Come through, let us be comfortable."

The room was indeed a comfortable one. Most of its furniture was of early 20th Century style. Solid and with that air of prolonged use and careful maintenance that marked old money. The only faintly modern notes where an old-style CD player, currently playing something classical, Harry thought (he was tone-deaf, always had been), and the patio window on one wall which led out onto a deck, with table and chairs, surrounded by an autumnal forest.

"The _Schwarzwald_ , where I grew up." Schmidt told him. "A full holographic reconstruction. I sit out there quite often, but the software tracks the seasons, and today is a little cold. Take a seat by the fire, Herr Potter."

They sat, and the Skull busied himself with a small table at his elbow. "I know you to be a connoisseur in the matter of whisky, Herr Potter, but it is too early in the day for that. I hope your taste in coffee is as refined. This is Viennese. You take it black, I hope?"

Harry did, and found it excellent, served European style, in a small cup he realised was genuine Crown Derby.

"You do all right for yourself, here." He remarked.

The Red Skull laughed. "You expected an orange jumpsuit and restraints?" He asked. "Had you come here during the first year of my incarceration, that would have been the case. But the term of my imprisonment is life, which thanks to my enhanced physiology, could stretch to another fifty years. There is no hope of escape, even for me. And you know the rules of the game, Herr Potter. If one is co-operative, and makes no trouble, then one can obtain privileges where cost is not a factor. My neighbour, Herr Fiske, has reached a similar agreement, but Herr Blonsky remains troublesome, and as such has a much less comfortable existence.

"Now as to your visit, I am aware it is not a purely social one. I am allowed no access to the internet, and such television programmes or cinema films as I might wish to see are provided pre-recorded on read-only flash drives. I am, however allowed hard copies of newspapers - among them your _Daily Prophet_ – and Steven is kind enough to visit regularly."

"Steve Rogers visits you?" Harry was not altogether surprised, but he was curious. "What do you talk about?"

"What do two old soldiers ever talk about?" Schmidt replied. "There are few left who have many experiences in common with Steven and I, Herr Potter. Herr Logan is perhaps the only other. We reminisce, go over our old campaigns and advise each other on what we might have done better. We exchange tall tales, and we set the world to rights. As Steven grows more cynical, so I mellow, and perhaps one day we will agree more than we disagree. Our respect has always been mutual.

"But I was aware of the misfortune that befell you and your friends. The _Prophet_ favours Minister Weasley heavily – its' proprietors have always been conservative – but it still tried to keep his accession to power free of scandal. But for the entire Golden Trio to resign overnight at the same time as Minister Shacklebolt was a little too much for a thinking person to swallow. Especially when you yourself, Herr Potter, were so obviously the heir apparent. A coup is a coup, and will only be missed by those who do not wish to see.

"So now I am curious as to why you are suddenly active again. Please do not deny it, unless you were pursuing a case, you could not have obtained clearance to come here."

Harry had always been prepared to be honest – the Red Skull had no external contacts, and would know if he was being lied to.

"We have reason to suspect that the Ministry has been penetrated, and that we face an opposition that's less fragmented and more organised than we've been led to believe. As an independent person with no current links to the Ministry, I've been asked to look into it." He explained. "I came here to ask you about some people who might be involved.

"Specifically, do you know anything about the wizard members of the Scholomance, and what they might have done after we took it down?"

"I see." Schmidt sighed. "You must understand, Herr Potter, that each and every one of us had his or her own agenda.

"The Master and his shadowy friend required the Tesseract for their own purposes. For my part, I had little interest in retrieving it unless I could recruit you as the Master of the Elder Wand. The Wand would have given you a degree of control over the Tesseract that even the Master could not have broken. Beyond that, I hoped that the chaos caused by a Shadow invasion might advance HYDRAs' cause. I have no idea as to how the Shadows were stopped, or by whom. Did you ever find out?"

"We only found wreckage." Harry allowed. "That and a lot of residual radiation. The Aesir say it wasn't them, and we've no reason to doubt that. Could've been the Kree, the Skrulls, the Shi'ar…. Hell, there's more than few Galadorian Spaceknights still knocking around, could've been a squad of them, for all we know!"

"A mystery still, then." The Skull shook his head. "But as to your question, Herr Tesla merely sought the use of HYDRAs' technical resources for his own research, Mystique was pursuing her usual goal of Mutant domination and SPECTRE were there because they were being paid.

"As to the magic-users, I think you understand better than I what motivated the late Arabella Riddle. Arkham was, I understand, determined to assert the superiority of ritual magic over natural – he was what you call a Squib, and it rankled. Mordo, of course, wishes to become Sorceror Supreme, and he looked to the Tesseract to give him power to overcome Dr Strange.

"Justin DuMorne was something of an enigma. His interest in the Tesseract seemed superficial. I believe that, like myself, he was looking to profit from a war against the Shadows. He did seem to have an understanding with Mordo. Not so much an alliance as an exchange of favours, but the details I do not know. I was not surprised when he was freed from the White Councils' prison. Had Mordo waited any longer, DuMorne would have been transferred here, and the magical defences of this place are on a par with its technological ones."

"Hmm." Harry thought for a moment. "Did any of them mention the New Thule Society, or the Black Council?"

The Red Skull blinked. "What an interesting question! As it happens, I may be able to help you after all.

"Of Thule I do not speak. HYDRA had few dealings with them. Kroenen, Rasputin and Grindelwald ran their fief without interference from any save the Fuhrer. It was only when I became aware that Grindelwald held the Elder Wand that I ordered Dumbledore to take it from him. As you know, he succeeded, but too late.

"But the Black Council is a different matter. I spied on my people, Herr Potter, as you might imagine. Trust is hard to come by when one lives by a creed of superiority unfettered by the morality of the weak. I used both technology and Psykers.

"After DuMornes' escape, I waited a while for him to re-emerge. When he did not, I tasked your former schoolfellow Cormac McLaggen, with locating him. At first, the reports were encouraging. DuMorne was active, but discreetly, and from an unknown location. Then the trail went cold, quite suddenly. A simple report that DuMorne was operating from within Latveria.

"Unfortunately for Herr McLaggen, I knew this to be a lie. There was bad blood between Doom and DuMorne , and he is forbidden from entering Latveria on pain of death. So I kept a closer watch upon our mutual acquaintance. He was in communication with a third party, and while he did not betray any of HYDRAs' secrets, he did receive intelligence which he did not see fit to report upon the activities of another group. This group was referred to as 'BC' or 'the Council', and many of the communications were signed 'J'. I was able to discover little more about the organisation, but it seemed to be confined to the wizard world.

"I was not entirely surprised to find that McLaggen had escaped capture. I suspect he was about to defect anyway, and his exit was merely expedited by SHIELDs' attack. He was never entirely comfortable with working for a largely non-magical organisation.

"Has that been of help, Herr Potter?"

"It has." Harry told him. "If nothing else, it corroborates the existence of an organisation operating within the wizard world, which may or may not be calling itself the Black Council.

"Thanks for your time, help and first-class coffee, Dr Schmidt."

"My pleasure, Herr Potter." Schmidt said. "It is always good to see another face."

Ernie MacMillan rose from the table he was sitting at and put out both hands to Hermione. She took them and kissed him lightly on both cheeks before sitting down.

"I got you a glass of that White Grenache you used to be fond of, I hope that's all right?" He said as he passed a menu over.

"It's perfect, Ernie, thank you." She said, taking an appreciative sip. "This all looks lovely. What d'you recommend?"

"Well, I know you're not a fan of red meat, so I'd go for either the chicken wrap -the one with Rocket and lime and coriander mayonnaise, or the mature cheddar and onion marmalade toasted bagel. You can get it on its own, or with chips, nachos or crisps."

After a moment's thought, Hermione plumped for the bagel on its own. Ernie ordered from a discreetly hovering server - he was having a ciabatta BLT – then took a pull at his pint and spoke without further preamble.

"You've got questions, of course."

"Always." She told him. "Why here? Why me? Why now after all this time?"

"Here because it's both public and safe." Ernie replied. "This is a muggle place, lots of business people lunch and network here. A lot of business gets talked and deals get made. The rule is to talk reasonably quietly and not to listen in to anyone else. You can't book, so there's no knowing where people will sit in advance, and there's so much general rabbit going on that ambient mikes are useless.

"I asked you because Harry is out of the country, even if I could meet him in public, and because I'd prefer not to be Soulgazed over lunch by your old man.

"As to why now, two reasons. Harry must be on to something, and I'm just about completely fucked off with the current situation!"

"How do you know Harry is out of the country?" Hermione asked.

"Because he isn't in it!" Ernie said flatly. "Those WAND people are good, but I know a homunculus when I see one! I check on Harry every week. He knows that, and he knows that I know he knows, so obviously he wanted me to find out. Whether he expected me to run to Dean or Percy with it I don't know. I think it's a test. At any rate, I didn't, I just had a quiet look round.

"Harry'd dropped right off the grid, but then an Avengers quinjet made an unscheduled stop at Stark London. A quinjet with your daughter on board. Not hard to put two and two together. Fortunately for Harry, my colleagues and superiors are quite clear that we shouldn't waste our time watching muggles like Stark or the Avengers.

"But if Harry is back in the field, it means that something is about to hit the fan, and I'm not going to stand around to get splattered!"

"How do I know you're not up to your neck in whatever might or might not be going on?" Hermione demanded.

"You don't." Ernie admitted. "But if you've got anything to ask me or say to me, you have the chance. I can't force you to believe me, or even listen, I'm just asking if you will."

Hermione thought about it as the food arrived. The bagel was as good as she'd been told it would be.

"Draupnir." She said simply.

"I had a feeling that would be it." Ernie nodded. "Well, I'll tell you right now, I don't know who he or she is, or who they work for. My job is just the logistics. The calls come through from a substation in France. Different code-words for different kinds of meeting – briefing, debriefing or crash and so on. I sweep the safe-house for any surveillance, make sure there's food and drink there as well as other supplies. Then I stay on watch outside while whoever is taking the meeting goes in by Floo. I've never seen Draupnir myself, but I can tell you one thing, he or she has a guard of their own. Not a witch or wizard. A Hag, a - what's that word – _Hexenbiest_.

"I take it that there's something wrong with Draupnir? I'm not surprised – the whole thing is too bloody good to be true."

"Why do you stay on, Ernie?" Hermione wanted to know. "I mean, I hate to say it, but you look about at the end of your tether."

"You have no idea." Ernie growled. "Percy just wants things to be the way they used to be before Voldemort and then 2008. When wizards were wizards and muggles were muggles and we didn't talk to each other. The world's got a lot more complicated since then and he doesn't understand or like it. Fudge is worse. He wants to go back to the days when all the top jobs went to Purebloods regardless. Percy isn't that bad, but Fudge plays on his fears and eggs him on. Most of the rest of the department heads just keep on with the job and try to stay out of trouble.

"Then there's Dean. There's no doubt he runs Magical Enforcement well enough, but it's like he doesn't really care. He's part of Jormungand, but he obviously thinks Percy is a prat, and he's more or less said out loud that he thinks Fudge is a waste of skin. He doesn't seem to be bothered about the way things are going, either. It's doing my head in.

"But as to staying on….Nine generations of Pureblood descent. Nine generations of MacMillans in Hufflepuff. What's the most we've ever done? Hufflepuff Prefects! I'm the first, the only, MacMillan to be more than a junior manager anywhere! My parents are so proud. If I gave it up, or got fired, they'd be terribly upset. I can't do that to them, so I'll stick it out until I can decently retire or until I get a better offer!"

The rest of lunch was passed in small talk. Ernie wanted to know if it was true that Ginny was seeing Viktor Krum. Hermione allowed that Harrys' ex-wife was accompanying the former Quidditch star and current High Master of Durmstrang on his latest book-signing tour. They both agreed that this was better than some of Ginnys' previous male 'companions' -all Quidditch players and generally considerably younger than she.

Then, just as they were about to part, Ernie said seriously. "Look, Hermione, I know you don't have any great reason to trust me, but if it comes to the point when Harry needs me and my Whitelighters, then we're with him and sod bloody Dean! Dennis and the Aurors will be the same, I expect. We all know who should really be Minister!"

The Pacific Northwest is an area of contrasts, ranging from the busy urban centres such as Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, to the high, arid plateaux of the east and the lush, cool temperate forests that cover much of the rest of the area. For someone who wants to live in wilderness solitude, there is plenty of opportunity here.

Wolverine piloted the quinjet through a standard search pattern in Stealth mode, while Harry watched the sensors,

"Sure we're in the right place?" He asked.

"Pretty much." Logan told him. "We don't keep too close a watch on them, so they don't move around so much. Satellite imagery puts them around twenty klicks outside of Portland."

"Makes sense." Harry allowed. "Portland draws weird like a magnet."

"And you never moved there?" Logan asked.

"Thanks, pal." Harry replied, then. "You're using your real name again. Any reason?"

"No reason not to." Wolverine told him. "Charlie and I managed to drag out most of my memories in the end. Though a lot of it is like it happened to another guy.

"But fact is, when we got hitched, 'Roro told me she didn't want to be 'Mrs Logan'. Anyways, once I could prove my identity and explain what happened to my folks and Rose, it was one thing less to come out of the past and bite my ass!"

"It also got you your commission back and a promotion or two!" Harry noted. "Hang on, got something. Small cabin by a lake. Three life-forms, none standard. Shouldn't there be five?"

"Twins are at Xaviers' institute." Logan said. "Red wasn't sure, but they had to go somewhere and Liz knew Charlie back in the day and trusts him.

"I'll put us down 'bout two klicks out. There's no tech, but Red is a decent ritual magician, so he'll probably know we're coming."

Harry sensed them before he saw them, so the ring of fire that suddenly surrounded him was not a surprise. He quenched it with a flick of his wand, to see a dark-haired, slender woman standing between him and the sturdy-looking cabin. She was gaping in astonishment. At the same moment something loomed behind him and a deep voice said.

"How'd you do that? Turn around, slow."

Harry complied, to face a red-skinned giant almost as big as Hagrid. He was wearing a duster, cargo pants and heavy boots, one hand was a massive stone prosthesis and the other held quite the biggest revolver Harry had ever seen, pointed at his head.

"Don't try anything." The giant warned him. "I ain't that good of a shot, but from this range I won't miss."

"Put the gun down, Red." Wolverine said from behind him. "That's a pal of mine, and you don't want to piss me off. Or him, for that matter."

"Ah, crap!" Hellboy said. "I never could see you comin' Logan!" He holstered the gun. "I'd still like to know how he put Lizs' fire out so easy."

"Because he's Harry Potter!" This was another voice. A cultured tenor that came from the lake shore. Harry turned to see a tall, slim figure wading ashore. Blue, slightly scaled skin, webbed hands and feet, wearing a pair of black trunks. The face was reminiscent of a Deep One, but bore an expression of mild curiosity.

"Gee, thanks, Abe!" Hellboy responded. "Who the Hell is Harry Potter?"

Abe Sapien sighed. "If you'd spent more time reading background files and less watching sitcoms, you'd know. Mr Potter is a remarkably powerful and famous British wizard, known as the Boy Who Lived and the Master of Death. To confront him would be both dangerous and, I expect, futile.

"However, the fact that he let us see him coming indicates that he has no hostile intentions. The fact that his companion remained unseen indicates that he is familiar with your reputation for unpredictability.

"Hello, Logan. I would say it's good to see you, but you are usually a harbinger of trouble."

"We just came to talk." Harry said.

"Then let's talk." Hellboy said. "Abe and Logan vouch for you, so I'll listen at least."

"Inside." Liz said. "Over coffee. It's not exactly warm out here and some of us aren't immune to temperature."

The cabin was surprisingly comfortable inside, it was clearly a well-established home. Built to accommodate Hellboys' seven-foot bulk, it was decidedly spacious and even held a large water-tank into which Abe climbed at once. Liz made coffee and they settled round the roaring fire, along with rather more cats than Harry could count, one of which promptly climbed into his lap. That seemed to count for more than both Logan and Abes' recommendations as far as Hellboy was concerned, as he visibly relaxed.

"So, what do you want to talk about?" He asked.

"The Thule Society." Harry told him. "There are rumours that they've made a comeback. Can you tell us about them, and if it's likely?"

"You have the records." Abe pointed out. "They were handed over when the BPRD merged with WAND in 2007, surely?"

"They were." Logan told him. "But only the ones from the 1980s onwards were digital. The old stuff was still on paper. SHIELD put it in storage, meaning to scan it all in, but most of it was destroyed in '08 when the Daleks breached the Triskelion."

"Crap!" Hellboy said. "We didn't see any Daleks out here, though I hear they hit Portland pretty bad. They're that dangerous?"

"Worse than you can imagine." Harry told him. "If it hadn't been for the Doctor…."

"Yeah, I heard of that guy. Never met him, though." Hellboy said. "But Thule, making a comeback? Nah!"

"You're sure?" Harry asked.

"Well," Hellboy allowed, "I guess someone could be usin' the name, but they won't be for long.

"Look, Thule was built by three guys. There was Kroenen - he was no wizard, but he could do ritual magic. He was Hitlers' man in there. Then there was the Russian, Rasputin. He had some powers, but we found out later that it was 'cause he was part demon. He had a way of gettin' into the Nevernever and pullin' things out. Bad things. The third was a genuine wizard called Gelert Grindlewald, who was not only a heck of a dark magician, but had gotten hold of a real badass wand."

"The Elder Wand." Harry replied.

"Right!" Hellboy said. "There was also a witch called Ilsa von Haupstein, but she was just Rasputins' sidekick.

"Anyways, these guys form the Society, and they try all sorts of occult stuff to help the Nazis. They even used a Haitian _bokor_ called Dr Saturday to spy on the British Navy….

"The Royal Navy." Harry corrected him. "There's no such thing as the British Navy."

Hellboy grunted, then went on. "Whatever. Saturday got taken down by an Frenchman operatin' out of England. De Richleau they called him, friend of Fathers'.

"Then in 1944, Kroenen and Rasputin go to some God-forsaken little rock off of Scotland and set up a portal into the Realm of Chaos to summon the _Ogdru Jahad_ – what the _Necronomicon_ calls the Old Ones or Other Gods. Father goes there with a squad of Marines and they bust it up. But not before Rasputin gets sucked into the Portal and I pop out – just a kid, then. But Kroenen and von Haupstein escape and carry on along with Grindelwald.

"But in 1945, Gindlewald gets challenged by an English wizard called…Stumblebum? Somethin' like that."

"Dumbledore." Harry said. "Albus Dumbledore, and he was working for HYDRA, not the British."

"If you say so." Hellboy said. "Don't know a lot about HYDRA. But this Dumbledore character hands Grindelwald his ass…What's so funny?"

"Never mind." Harry told him. "You had to know Dumbledore to understand. But Grindelwald got locked up in Nurmengard until Voldemort killed him in '97."

"I knew he got locked up, didn't know about the other thing, though I heard of Voldemort. Now I think of it, you're the one took him down, right?

"Anyways, Kroenen and von Haupstein stayed with Hitler, helped him fake his death and carried on the occult wars until 1958, when Hitler was finally killed. After that, they disappeared, went completely dark until 2004.

"That was when they managed to revive Rasputin and tried to pull the Old Ones through again – usin' me as the key. It didn't work out for them. Ilsa was killed, so was Kroenen – I got his clockwork heart somewhere here – and Rasputin was possessed by Nyarlathotep until I blew him up.

"But the reason I know that Thule can't start up again is that Kroenen and Grindelwald cooked up an initiation ritual for the Society. In order to be a member of Thule you had to pledge in blood, yours and your sponsors. But the sponsor had to be either Kroenen, Rasputin, Grindelwald or Hitler, and the blood had to be taken direct from the vein, bottled won't cut it.

"Now blood magic is dark stuff, but it's powerful, and the kicker is that, as part of the ritual, there's a death curse on anyone who uses the Thule Society name unless they're a blood-member. Now there might be a couple blood members still alive, but they can't initiate anyone new because all the sponsors are gone, and if they try, the novices will die. Unless Rasputin has popped up again – and Abe would know if he did – then it ain't happening.

"That answer your question, oh Master of Death?"

"It does." Harry said. "But if you call me that again I'll cast a Recolour Charm on you that'll turn your skin hot pink for a month!

"Thanks for the coffee, and for not shooting me. Logan, we'd better get over to New York, I promised I'd have dinner with Steve and Sue before I orb back to London.

"Hopefully Ron and Hermione will have dug up something useful by now."


	6. Chapter 6

**Keeper, Beater, Seeker, Spy**

 **Chapter Six**

Oliver Wood was not the kind of man who liked letting people do his dirty work for him. As Captain of Quidditch, he had trained as hard as he'd made his team train and later, in his work for the Ministry and then the Wizengamot he had never allowed a subordinate to work late without his direct support. Anyway, he had always regarded Harry Potter as in some degree his protégé, and if he'd dropped Harry in it again, he was prepared to wade out into the same stuff.

Which was why the Minster of Magic was now sitting across his desk, bridling with a mixture of indignation and apprehension.

"I don't understand, Oliver, why you had to call me into your office like this!" He snapped. "We could've talked at the Club. Summoning me in front of everyone like that. It's humiliating!"

"It's official." Oliver told him flatly. "If we'd talked at the club, folk would've said we were plotting something. Now you can look them in the eye and say this was a genuine meeting. You do too much chatting in quiet corners, Percy. That's part of what I want to talk to you about. It looks bad."

"What do you mean?" Percy spluttered.

"I mean all those quiet chats with people who aren't even in the Ministry." Oliver said. "All those influential, rich old families you suck up to the way Cornelius Fudge used to."

"Minister Fudge ran things properly!" Percy insisted. "He consulted with people who understood our traditions and way of doing things."

"It never occurred to you to consult your own highly-professional staff?" Oliver asked. "People who've been doing their jobs for years and know them inside out?

"Then there's the whole Jormungand thing. All those confidential meetings with Dean and Jeremiah. Releasing information in dribs and drabs. Deciding policy behind closed doors. It's not transparent, Percy!"

"You've been listening to bloody Hermione!" Percy spat. "You're a fool if you think she has our best interests at heart! You should have let me arrest her when we had the chance!"

"What have you got against her?" Percy wanted to know. "Her muggle blood?"

"Not her muggle blood, her muggle opinions!" Percy said. "Most Newbloods adapt to our way of doing things, but not her! You might not remember – you'd not long left – but even as early as her Fourth Year she was trying to liberate House-Elves. Always going on about equality. Not just for Newbloods, which I understand, but for Goblins, Centaurs, even bloody Vampires and Werewolves! Then there's all that democracy stuff. Wizards don't need democracy, you can't control magic by voting about it or letting just anybody have a say. You need the most skilled, the wisest. People born into wizard families who understand it in their bones, or everything will go to Hell in a handcart! That woman would've given Dementors the vote if we'd let her!"

He seemed to realise he was ranting, and pulled himself up, taking a deep breath. Oliver shrugged.

"Well, that's as may be, but the Wizengamot have instructed me to tell you that from now on you're to maintain a professional distance from certain people in your role as Minister. People who are known to hold strong political views, and to campaign on them, are not suitable people to hold private meetings with." Oliver looked over some papers on his desk. "Also there are to be no more unminuted meetings of Jormungand – I need to see them. You're also to begin full consultations on policy with your heads of department and section - before you decide, not after you've announced."

"The Wizengamot wants all this?" Percy asked, incredulous.

"This comes down from the White Council." Oliver told him. "They've decided that wizard government needs to be more open and accountable. It seems that increasing numbers of muggle-born wizard children – especially in Europe and North America – are being sent to UNIT or SHIELD training centres rather than wizard schools, to be trained with Mutants or other young Metahumans. Apparently parents are beginning to look into the way our world works before they hand their kids over, and some of them don't like it. We Obliviate them, of course. But you know and I know that the supply of fresh blood over the generations is what keeps our world from completely degenerating.

"Well, thanks for coming, Percy. I'll send you a memo about all this later today."

Percy nodded, and began to get up, then Oliver said.

"Oh, hang on! There is one thing I wanted to ask you!"

Percy slumped back into the chair, visibly annoyed, as Oliver went on. "I've been auditing records from the time Minster Shacklebolt… _resigned_ … I know you were there, you signed in when you arrived. But you never noted how you knew to come in. It wasn't a Home Affairs issue, so I don't know why anyone might have called you. How did you find out?"

"Dean Thomas called Jeremiah and myself in." Percy said irritably. "The Minister, Potter and Ron couldn't be reached, and Ernie MacMillan was dead set on causing an international incident by extracting Longbottom with Whitelighters. Dean needed more authority than he had, so he called us. Perfectly proper, under the circumstances."

"I see." Oliver made a note. "Thanks, Percy."

"Why, hello, Ron! How lovely to see you! Fancy a drink?" Ginny Potters' smile was bright but brittle, and her eyes were apprehensive. Unlike many people who knew Ron, she did not underestimate her brother. Behind the funny, self-deprecating gentle giant façade was a brilliant, perceptive mind and a streak of ruthlessness that scared her.

Ron didn't smile, and his eyes looked right through her. "It's ten in the morning, Ginny. Too early for the giggle-juice, even by your standards."

"Oh, you're no fun!" She retorted. "I hope this won't take long, only Viktor will be back soon…."

"If you think," Ron said flatly, "that I give a rats' arse for anything Viktor Krum might think, say or do, you've taken one too many bludgers to the head, sister mine!"

Now she was genuinely frightened. If Viktor came back and thought Ron might be bullying or scaring her, she knew how he would react. He'd go on the attack, and Ron would go through him like a hot knife through butter. Ginny didn't want that, not least because she was genuinely in love with Viktor.

"All right." She said. "All right. What do you want, Ron?"

"The night we all got fired." Ron got straight to the point. "Ernie called you to try to find Harry, and you said you couldn't. Now we both know that's bullshit. Harry always made sure you could contact him, wherever he was. So why didn't you?"

Ginny hung her head. "I couldn't." She whispered. "It's complicated, Ron. Just leave it, please?"

"I can't." He said coldly. "Not any more. Whatever little secrets or hang-ups you might have to hide mean nothing now. It's got a lot more complicated, and it needs to be unravelled, or people are going to die. Some already have."

She looked up at him then, and realised he was telling the truth. She also realised that, if she didn't speak, he'd Soulgaze her right there and then. Something she was not, and might never be, ready for.

"It was Dean." She said softly. "He was in bed with me that night. We'd been having an affair for maybe a year. Don't ask me why – I just felt like I wanted more of something. I don't know what, but it turned out it wasn't sex in the end.

"Dean overheard the call, and he shook his head at me to say no. I thought he wanted to call Harry himself, so I put Ernie off. Give Dean a chance to pick up some Brownie points with the rest of you, sort of thing.

"But then he jumped out of bed and started to dress. I asked him where he was going and he said to the Ministry to sort things out. I said wasn't he going to call Harry and he said no way, and I wasn't either. If I did, he said, he'd tell Harry about us, tell Harry I'd seduced him and half the other Aurors.

"What could I do? I told him never to come back and we were finished, and he said that was fine with him, I'd just handed him Harrys' head on a plate.

"I thought to myself that it would all be OK, that if Dean or anyone tried it on with Harry, he'd make mincemeat of them and take over the Ministry. I never thought Harry would just give up!

"I hated him for that! We all know he should have been Minister years ago, after all he did! But all he wanted was to walk down the street without being recognised! I don't understand it!"

The last sentence was almost a wail. A wail of self-pity that forced a more than usually brutal response from Ron.

"Of course you don't." He said. "You're a spoilt brat, always were. Always grabbing attention, always wanting treats, and always getting both while the rest of us had to make do with second-hand. Mum knows it, she blames herself and I can't disagree with her. I hoped with the war and everything you'd grow out of it, but it was just a big game for you, wasn't it? Even going after the Scholomance was just another chance to be a hero for you. You never did anything worthwhile – even marrying Harry - unless there was something in it for you. The rest was all me, me, me. Well, you've made your bed – several, in fact – so I wish you joy of lying in it.

"By the way, Harry already knew you were screwing Dean. You didn't honestly think you could ever put one past him, did you?"

And with that, he left.

The sitting room at the safe-house was more than a little crowded. As well as Harry, Ron and Hermione, there were Oliver Wood, Dennis Creevey and Draco Malfoy. Gabrielle was upstairs, watching the street, but Clark Kent lounged by the door, apparently bored but missing nothing.

"Right," Harry said, "we know that the so-called New Thule Society is a non-starter. According to Hellboy, anyone who uses that name without a specific ritual will die in short order."

"Yes." Draco noted. "Abe Sapiens was kind enough to send us some of his own research based on the destroyed BPRD files. It seems that if the name is used in any kind of invocation or ritual without the presence of specific blood, it attracts the attention of predators from the Nevernever. Specifically, the Hounds of Tindalos, who sound extremely unpleasant and are known to hunt prey across time and space relentlessly."

"Dracos' Fun Fact for Today." Ron noted.

"Well, it's effective." Harry said. "Which leaves us with the Black Council. According to the Red Skull, DuMorne is operating in the shadows, but we do know that Cormac McLaggen was working with him while Cormac was still with HYDRA, and that he's been off the grid since. Until he turned up at the head of the team that captured Neville. So whatever is going on, Cormac's involved.

"Everything we've found out about Draupnir indicates that it's basically an exercise in disinformation. It's also probable that it's the way the mole gets intel out to whoever they are – we'll sort that out once we get the mole."

"A pretty good cover." Oliver allowed. "With everyone treating Draupnir like the Oracle at Delphi, there's every excuse to have meetings with them at any time. But it does limit our suspect pool to the Jormungand Group.

"I've spoken with Percy, and slipped in a question about the night it all went down. He didn't seem panicked or worried by the question, just irritated. But he did tell me it was Dean who called him and Jeremiah in. It seems all he wants is for things to be the way they used to be when he was young, back in Cornelius Fudges' day. He blames you, Hermione, for most of it."

"So does Jeremiah." Dennis noted. "He's always going on about your new laws and how they stop us doing our job properly and fly in the face of wizard custom and tradition."

Hermione struck a dramatic pose, the back of her hand on her forehead. "Oh, infamy! Infamy!" She cried theatrically. "They've all got it in for me!"

Everyone either laughed or groaned, then Ron said. "Percy's a muppet, always has been. He thought he was going somewhere with Fudge, but then Scrimgeour used him as a gopher, and Thicknesse ignored him. Kingsley treated him decently, but didn't want him following him around like a puppy.

"Flexible thinking was never Percys' strong point, so all the changes were hard for him. But I don't think he'd ever turn traitor.

"Jeremiah I don't know that well."

"Arch-conservative." Dennis told them. "Nothing later than the 1800s is worth a damn to him. When he's hiring new staff, the first – sometimes the only – thing he checks is their bloodline. He'll hire Slytherins and Ravenclaws, but not Gryffindors – says they're disruptive and insubordinate, can't think why – and will only use Hufflepuffs as low-level clerks and cleaners. Won't use a mirror or the Web, only Owl post. Insists everything is hand-copied on parchment with a quill. He disciplined one of his people last month for using a felt-tip in the office! An 'unlicensed muggle device', he called it.

"I'd say he's a possible. He certainly isn't happy with the way things are."

"Ernie's not the mole." Hermione declared. "I'd put money on it. He only does the logistics for Draupnir meetings, never sees the take, has no contact with the source.

"Also, he's angry, frustrated and the only thing that's keeping him in the job is his family. He swore when he was telling me about it, and that's not like Ernie. Not in front of a woman."

"He was the least likely suspect, anyway." Harry noted. "He's not the type. Too solid, too honest."

"Which leaves Dean." Dennis said. "Right in the middle of Jormungand, but his face doesn't fit. He's not a conservative, far from it. He's not even sure if he's a Halfblood or a Newblood - mother's a muggle and he's never found out who his father is.

"But, I don't know. He dislikes Percy and despises Jeremiah. He's just marking time in his job, does everything he's asked, but no more. He follows policy to the letter and doesn't seem to care one way or the other. Never done anything out of order…."

"Apart from sleep with my wife!" Harry pointed out. "But that's not against the law, or he'd have a lot of cell-mates in Azkaban." He gave a grim chuckle. "He was the first, the only, serious affair she had before we split. I mean, she started having flings just after Lily went to Hogwarts. Mostly one-nighters with Quidditch players or other media types when she was away for the paper or her chat show. Once or twice a year, at first, but they got more frequent as time went on.

"Dean was the only one she saw steadily, and the only one who had any connection with my work. It had been going on about eighteen months by then. She obviously thought I didn't know, but the truth is I didn't care.

"I knew she'd be with Dean that night when I was away. When I realised she hadn't called me, I thought it was just spite. Or maybe giving Dean a leg-up to show me how the game should be played. Up until a few minutes ago, when Ron told us what she told him, I never realised she didn't know I knew! The idea that Dean might be able to blackmail her like that never occurred to me!

"What else do we know about Dean?"

"Rather a lot, in fact, but most of it out of date." Draco said. "After I rescued him from HYDRA in Jamaica back in 2014, he was on a watch-list for a while. We had to be sure HYDRA hadn't recruited him or compromised him in some way.

"But he has no unusual contacts. He lives alone. He dates various ladies, all around his own age, but does seem to have a penchant for married women, or for career women who do not have marriage on their agenda. He lives within his means – no unaccounted-for spending.

"I have made a few discreet enquiries, and these show no substantive changes in lifestyle. The only oddity is that his mother, who is now elderly and infirm, subsists on muggle benefits in a care home. Dean makes no contribution to her care, and in fact has had no contact with her since he came of age. Reprehensible, no doubt, but hardly evidence of treason.

"I am reluctant…"

Draco stopped as Hermione put up a hand. She turned to Ron, who had been unusually quiet. Harry noticed that his friends' eyes had a familiar, intense, inward focus. _Here it comes_! He thought.

Hermione put her hand on Rons'. "Lay it out for us, big man." She said softly.

Ron spoke without preamble, in a tone very different from his usual slow West Country burr.

"Kingsley knew, or suspected, there was a mole. He told Harry that much. He started looking into it on the quiet. On his own, because he didn't know who he could trust. He got close to something, or someone. Too close, and whoever it is tipped to it, or just got nervous.

"But Kingsley was ill, dying in fact. Harry didn't want to be Minister, neither did I. 'Mione might have, but the Wizengamot, even now, wouldn't ratify a Newblood as Minister, too many people would be uncomfortable about it. Kingsley was on his own, and vulnerable.

"So they set him up with that story about the defector. Neville said it was a set-up, that there was no defector. They might have been hoping Kingsley would go himself. They knew he wouldn't send one of us. Either way, they gave themselves time to interrogate Neville before letting the Hungarian authorities find out that something was going on. They'd have made sure it all came back to Kingsley.

"That would not only have put him out of a job, but tainted anyone he was associated with, like us. They didn't know about the Psyker Network, and they weren't expecting the three of us to bust up their party. But it didn't matter in the end. Except to Neville, who got to come home.

"We know how Dean knew to get to the Ministry that night, and why Harry wasn't called. But Cho told me that when he arrived, he already knew what was going on in Budapest. But how could he know that, unless he was party to the scheme in the first place? How could he know Kingsley was running an unauthorised operation?

"That's why he was with Ginny that night. He knew what was going to happen, and his job was to make sure Harry didn't get to the Ministry before he could get Percy and Jeremiah there. They'd panic, do anything Dean suggested and be happy to take the credit.

"Dean Thomas is the mole, Harry, I'd stake my life on it!"

There was a moment's silence, then Draco said. "Apart from his choice of House, I have seldom known Ronald to be wrong about anything important. That said, and as I was about to say, I am reluctant to exclude anyone -with the exception of MacMillan, who lacks even basic cunning – from the suspect pool without probative evidence.

"The question – the only question – we need to consider is how to obtain the evidence."

"I can think of one way to do that." Harry said slowly. "The problem is, if it goes wrong, anybody involved will be up Shit Creek without a paddle."

"So what else is new?" Ron asked happily. "We'll just get out and wade, like always."

"Says the one with the longest legs." Hermione sighed. "OK, trot it out, Fearless Leader!"

"You are aware, are you not," Draco commented, "that that makes the two of you Boris and Natasha?"

"So are you Bullwinkle or Rocky?" Ron asked.

Dennis Creevey sat down beside Ernie MacMillan in the Ministry canteen and exchanged the usual pleasantries. As soon as he was sure nobody was listening, Dennis dropped his voice a little and said. "The contact you met the other day is willing to accept your help. She asked for a codeword for a crash meeting and access to a safe house."

"I'll get it sorted." Ernie promised.

The Ministry of Magics' Signals Station in Calais was hardly a hive of activity. Relations between the Ministry and the Bureau des Sorcieres were cordial at worst, so security was unforgivably lax. The sudden Apparation of two masked wizards took everyone by surprise, and all three staff were out cold before anything could be done. Scorpius Malfoy set about sending a message to London while Justin Finch-Fletchley began to Obliviate the staff.

Ernie met up with Hermione in the first-floor front bedsit in the house opposite the safe-house. The room was rented by a succession of young Whitelighters – posing as muggles - whose job it was to keep an eye on the house opposite and keep this observation post free for use.

She was not alone, Ernie noticed, but accompanied by two younger people, a man and a woman. He was dark and she was fair, but there was a certain family resemblance between them.

"These are Kelly Burkhardt and Diana Renard." Hermione told him. "Kelly is a Grimm and Diana is a powerful Psyker. They're here to keep an eye out for that _Hexenbiest_ , just in case Draupnir decides to join the party."

"Is that likely?" Ernie asked.

Hermione shrugged. "Harry's past dealing in likelihoods, just possibilities." She explained. "He doesn't mean to let anything slip.

"The message asking for a crash meeting said that it was about a mole in the Ministry, so that should make sure only the actual mole attends. But we don't know if there is a response code, and if there is, Draupnir might come to find out what's going on."

She nodded to the two youngsters, who immediately left, then went on. "I take it that everything is to plan so far?"

"Spot on." Ernie said. "I was asked to make the arrangements in a rush. Orders came from the usual source in Pecys' office, and as usual, they don't tell me who's attending. Harry just Orbed in with Draco and Ron. I'll stay here as usual. What about you?"

"I'll be outside with Dennis and some Aurors he trusts." Hermione said. "In case things turn nasty in there."

"You've got signals? That was quick!" Ernie was admiring.

Hermione shook her head. "Not necessary. Ron and I have been mind-linked ever since the Scholomance thing. If he's in trouble, I'll know!

"Anyway, Ron has his 'special' belt on. If there is trouble, we'll know when the house explodes!"

"I thought Rose had the suit now?" Ernie said.

"She's got the Mark IV – and the Mark III." Hermione revealed. "Ron still has the Mark II, which is quite powerful enough.

"I'd best be going. Hopefully, I'll see you soon, Ernie."

"If it is Percy after all, it's going to kill Mum!" Ron fretted.

"I think it unlikely." Draco offered. "Upon reflection, it occurs to me that while your brother may be wrong-headed, his loyalties have never been in doubt. Divided loyalties do bad things to a person, I would know. My parents suffered a good deal."

"How is your mum?" Harry asked.

"Well enough." Draco answered. "Losing Steph was a blow, but not an unexpected one, he had been growing increasingly frail. She treasures their time together as the happiest in her life. I owe you one for that, Harry, without your encouragement, she would never have developed the relationship. She continues to paint – a hobby she shared with him. Should she begin to acquire an excessive number of cats I will, of course, take steps."

"The fire just lit." Ron warned.

They took positions around the room, Harry nearest the hearth. Draco cast a Disillusionment Charm.

The fire turned green and blazed up, then a tall figure stepped into the room. Harry was more surprised than he had thought he would be. And more disappointed. As Draco dropped the charm, he stepped forward.

"Hello, Dean." He said.

Dean turned fast, but Harry had lost none of his reflexes or skill and Deans' wand flew across the room to be caught deftly by Draco. Dean dropped into a fighting couch, but Ron suddenly loomed behind him, delivering a kidney-punch that sent Dean to his knees, retching.

"It appears that your perspicacity remains undimmed, Ronald." Draco remarked. "My felicitations."

"Thanks, I think." Ron said. "D'you think our friend here is ready for round two?"

"Fuck that!" Dean gasped. "I'm done. You're as slick as you ever were, Harry." He pulled himself to his feet.

"On the sofa." Harry ordered. "Keep your hands where we can see them!"

Dean collapsed onto the seat. "Christ, Ron, when did you get to be such a badass? You used to fight fair, once!"

"Seen a lot of shit since then." Ron told him. "You're just one more turd."

Dean gave a twisted grin. "Used to be I thought we were two of a kind, Ron." He said. "But you got rich, didn't you? Old blood, new money – bitch of a mix!

"I suppose you want the whole story, or are you just going to Soulgaze me? Not that you've got the right any more, not legally, any of you."

"Actually, I do." Harry said. "Just now, I'm a White Council Warden, and I could order Ron to ream your brain out any time.

"But let's keep this official, shall we? Dennis and his people will be here in a minute, but before then, I've got one question, and if I don't like the answer, I might have to kill you."

"So ask." Dean growled. "I'm past lying now."

"Did you ever really care for Ginny?" Harry asked.

Dean shrugged. "When we were teenagers dating, yes. When we had our affair? No more than she cared for me. A good shag, a way for her to get back at you, and for me to keep a closer eye on you, that's all."

"Fair enough." Harry said. "Can't argue with that. If you didn't care, then it's all in the game, right? But if you did care, and betrayed her anyway, that would've been unforgivable.

"Hi, Dennis. Take this piece of rubbish away. I'll let Oliver know."


	7. Chapter 7

**Keeper, Beater, Seeker, Spy**

 **Chapter Seven**

"They call themselves the Black Council." Dean was saying. "Buggered if I know why, but it means something to the man in charge. I don't know who he is, never met him, but they call him the Archmage."

"So who did you deal with?" Dennis asked.

"Two blokes mainly." Dean told him. "One was a Squib called Arkham – called himself the worlds' greatest ritual magician. The other was our old friend Cormac McLaggen, but I expect you figured that one out."

"Arkham's dead." Dennis said. "He was shot by Heinrich Blofeld. Blofeld told Ron that, just before Ron made him geography."

"Don't you mean history?" Dean grinned.

Dennis shook his head. "I saw what was left, and it was geography – there were bits of him everywhere. I think Ron was bit cross with that bloke."

"If you say so." Dean replied. "But Arkham told me he couldn't die. Said he always had an acolyte trained to make the Salts and say the Words over them. As long as there was a body, or even ashes, he said, he could be brought back. Told me to check Borellus if I didn't believe him."

"So what do this Black Council want?" Dennis got back to the point.

"To replace the White Council, as far as I can make out." Dean said. "To replace Dr Strange with Baron Mordo as Sorceror Supreme, and to abolish all other magical governments. I mean things like the Wizengamot and MACUSA, as well as all the Ministries and so on. They wanted to make the Council the sole authority for the magical world and repeal all the laws against Dark Magic. Give ritual magicians the same status as wizards, as well. Also, completely separate from and ignore muggles.

"Beyond that, not a lot apart from enjoying themselves, far as I can tell."

"And you agreed with them?" Dennis was incredulous.

"Fuck, no!" Dean laughed. "I was in it for the money, mate!

"Look, Cormac approached me in about 2025. I'd been freelancing on the side for about five or six years, then, picking up a few Galleons here and there."

"Doing what, exactly?" Dennis demanded.

Dean shrugged. "Whatever paid, mate. Bit of bodyguarding, bit of enforcement, bit of selective blindness and deafness, being careless with evidence. Occasionally making annoying people go away permanently.

"Risky, mind. Harry had rules and Ron doesn't miss much. I had to miss out on a lot of jobs because they couldn't be camouflaged as legit work or done discreetly. I wasn't about to turn in a steady wage just to have my old colleagues end up feeling my collar!

"Anyway, Cormac got to hear about it and offered me a couple of jobs, low-level stuff, but he paid well and on time. Then he suggested that I could get more regular and better pay for passing along any bits of useful information he might want. Mostly about the bosses and what they were up to. Bit of a no-brainer, really. Anybody who earns that amount of money for sitting on their arse is fair game, right?

"Then later on it was 'how about we swap you a bit of info instead?' Laughed my duck off! I'm not an idiot, I told them. If I'm going to be exchanging chickenfeed for real intel, I'd better bloody get paid as well! More than you're paying now! Cormac laughed then, said I was his kind of bloke.

"It was easy. I go to Jeremiah with the intel I'd been given. He hates Kingsley like poison, Harry too, so he was well up for putting one over on them with this brilliant new source. He roped Percy in, because Percy's old-fashioned and Jeremiah had been playing on that for years to get him onside against Kingsley. That pair of plonkers thought the intel was genuine, mind. I'd convinced them that I was fed up with being passed over for promotion, so I'd come to them instead of taking it to Harry.

"That's how Draupnir and Jormungand got started. Cormac briefed me that one of the main goals was getting shut of Kingsley along with Harry and his gang. Even their bloody Archmage is shit-scared of Harry, I think. Well by that time, Ginny is pissed off because Harry won't do the celebrity lifestyle thing, and she's sleeping around. Didn't take much to get her into bed and 'cos I was an Auror as well, she was a bit more free with the pillow-talk than she should've been. I always knew what Harry was doing from then on.

"That's how I knew Kingsley was getting paranoid – Harry noticed it and told Ginny, she thought she'd better warn me, the dozy cow. So I threw Kingsley some breadcrumbs and Cormac set the sting up. Never thought he'd send Neville, but what's one less aristocratic waste of space? No skin off my nose."

"You did all that, just for a few Galleons?" Dennis asked.

"Risk my neck for a _few_ Galleons?" Dean laughed again. "No fear! It was a _lot_ of Galleons. I've got a private vault at Gringotts for my retirement fund. One more year and I was going to quit. Go to Haiti, where there's no Ministry to get in a mans' face. Drink Bacardi and Coke, lie on a beach and get regular blow-jobs in a big bed with silk sheets!

"You've got no bloody idea, have you?" Dean was angry now. "My father buggered off when I was tiny. Mum was getting by on benefits while I was small. Then I get the Hogwarts letter and I think things might get better. But it was just as bad, worse in fact. In the muggle world, half the kids in any school are being raised by single mums or at least by parents who never bothered to get married. Nobody gives a toss, but in the wizard world, a bastard's still a bastard – unless your Dad is some posh Pureblood – then you get called Fitzmalfoy or whatever and everybody thinks it's great. But me, I'm Dean Fitz-Who-The-Fuck-Knows, so I'm less than nobody.

"Then they don't know if I'm a Halfblood or a Mudblood, so they assume I'm the second, because no _wizard_ would knock a woman up and then run off, would he? Yeah, right!

"Mum, meanwhile, is the biggest idiot of all. There was this bloke, kept coming round, trying to get off with her. Richest guy in the neighbourhood, had a car showroom. But he was married, and Mum wouldn't have anything to do with him. For Christs' sake! All she had to do was shag him a couple of times a week, and he'd've looked after her. Got her a better flat, decent food, nice clothes, a car. Instead she let her morals leave her in a string of zero-hours minimum wage jobs.

"And I'm stuck here watching rich bastards like Potter and Purebloods like Weasley lord it around the place. And don't tell me Ron got rich 'cos he worked for it! D'you think Weasley Enterprises would've ever got off the ground if the family hadn't been Purebloods?

"So, fuck the lot of you! I'm not sorry for what I did, just sorry I got caught!

"I suppose it's Azkaban, now?"

Dennis shook his head. "No. At least not immediately. You'll be detained in a safe-house here in London for a while, until you've been debriefed and possibly Soulgazed. Then you're being handed over to the White Council – they'll want a long chat with you, I think.

"After that, Azkaban, perhaps. Or the Dark Keep. Or perhaps the wizard penal colony on Vie de Marlie. You did a lot of damage to a lot of people, Dean, and they'll all want a piece of you! I've even heard rumours that Dr Doom suspects you're behind a couple of losses he's suffered. Fancy a trip to Latveria?

"We'll talk more tomorrow, Dean, because right now if I have to listen to you any more I'm going to either puke or kill you."

"it's hard to think of Dean hating us all so much!" Hermione was close to tears.

"I don't think he does." Dennis allowed. "More like he's indifferent to us all. He seems to think that the only hope he ever had of a decent life was to get hold of a lot of money. He thought that however hard he worked, he'd never get more than a decent, ordinary, job. Not enough for him, so he stopped caring where the money came from, or what he had to do to get it."

Harry shook his head. "I think it was hard on him, growing up like that, especially in the wizard world. Wizards were – still are – old-fashioned about some things, compared with muggles. It's a bit ironic that what would have held him back most as a muggle – his colour – made no difference to wizards, but the bit muggles wouldn't have cared about – his single-parent background – went against him here."

"Not so much." Ron said practically. "It was you and I, Harry, who had the influence on his career. We knew Dean, or thought we did, and didn't care about his background. He just wasn't good enough to get any higher. I mean, he was a competent Auror, but he didn't have that extra bit of spark that makes a brilliant one, or even an above-average one."

"Being fair," Hermione said, "it must have been hard for him when Seamus was killed. They were very close, best mates. With Seamus gone, Dean must have felt very alone."

"All of these points, each valid in and of themselves, may indeed provide explanations." Draco noted. "But they do not provide excuses! The fact that my family were Pureblooded, that they were aristocratic traditionalists, may make their allegiance to the late and unlamented Mr Riddle understandable, but they do not excuse it or the actions they took because of it. My own behaviour as an adolescent and a young man was, and is, equally inexcusable, and I am only grateful for the chance you all gave me to make up for it!"

"Which you've done and then some!" Ron told him heartily. "But it's swings and roundabouts, as 'Miones' Dad used to say. We gained you and lost Dean."

"Fair exchange is no robbery." Draco allowed.

Ron thumped him on the shoulder, knocking him slightly off-balance. "I think we made a profit on the deal, mate!"

It was then that Oliver came in and dropped into a chair, exhausted and rather disgruntled. "Percy's resigned." He said sourly.

"He didn't have to do that!" Harry said. "He got taken in, we all did, but he didn't do anything wrong! Not deliberately, anyway. I mean, I don't agree with his ideas, but…"

Oliver raised a hand. "I know, Harry, I said the same. But Percy said he should've known better, shouldn't have let himself be fooled, and he'd made the same mistakes Cornelius Fudge did. Which reminds me, his last official act was to fire Jeremiah Fudge! He also plans to make a public apology to the three of you."

"Oh, great!" Harry groaned. "Just when I finally thought I'd never have to see myself on the front page of the bloody _Prophet_ again!"

Dean was exhausted, but even so, he slept poorly. Poorly enough so that he was brought awake by the air-displacement of a soundless Apparation. He sat up in bed, reaching under his pillow for a wand that was, of course, not there.

A tall figure stood in the centre of the room. Now he came forward, moving with a distinct limp. As he did so, the streetlight that shone through a gap in the curtains illuminated his face. Dean's eyes widened in recognition, but before he could speak, the figure moved fast.

A few seconds later, there was a green flash, and a muffled cry. Then nothing except a slight movement of air.

 _Dear Harry,_

 _I'm not about to beg for forgiveness, any more than you would. I'm surprised that you knew what I was up to, and disappointed that you chose to leave me to it. On the other hand, you've always been too bloody kind and generous to me, even after I walked out on you._

 _Mind, I did feel a bit of a Charlie, or Charlotte, when I heard about your new job. I suppose there's no point in me telling you to make the most of it, is there? You'll probably resign as soon as you decently can and do your best to disappear again. Of all the men in the world, I had to marry the only one who actually does crave anonymity!_

 _Speaking of marrying, I'm actually writing to tell you that you don't need to pay me an allowance any more. Viktor and I are getting married next week, so I won't need it. Viktor said I should invite you, but I thought it would be bad taste, and you'd not come anyway, would you?_

 _I did invite the kids. James said he'd come, Albus said he couldn't and Lily also sent me a reply. Two words, and the second one was 'off'. I'd accuse you of turning her against me, but that's something you'd never dream of doing, isn't it? Something else I've only myself to blame for, Ron would say._

 _By the way, was that Gabbi Delacour standing a bit too close to you in the press photos? She always did have a thing for you. Are you together now? Or are you still doing your 'once bitten' thing?_

 _Anyway, that's really all I have to say. You probably won't hear from me again, and you probably don't want to. I don't blame you, and I promise I'll stay out of your life from now on. I know you well enough to know you'll stay out of mine – unless I break the law!_

 _Try not to die alone and forgotten, Harry. I couldn't bear it, and you deserve better._

 _Good luck,_

 _Ginny._

Harry looked around the Cabinet table, then got directly to it.

"As you all know, Minister Weasley resigned a few days ago, and Jeremiah Fudge, Head of Foreign Affairs, was dismissed. I don't need to tell you that Dean Thomas will no longer be heading Enforcement. Also, I have been told that Penelope Clearwater has resigned her position as Head of Home Affairs, citing a wish to enter the private sector."

Harry placed his hands, fingers interlaced, on the blotter in front of him and forced himself not to fidget.

"Now, none of this could have happened at a worse time. The revelation that a spy has been operating inside the Ministry for some years, working for a hostile force which may or may not be the Black Council, is destabilising enough, without mass resignations at the top level.

"As a result, by order of the Wizengamot, and for my sins, I am taking over as Minister of Magic for the time being. It need hardly be said that I'm less than happy about this, and intend to do what is necessary to repair the damage as quickly as possible.

"The first order of business has been to form this Cabinet. I am therefore pleased to announce that Ernest MacMillan has accepted the post of Head of Home Affairs. Ms Susan Bones has succeeded Mr Fudge as Head of Foreign Affairs. I have also reconstituted the Department of Muggle Affairs, which Minster Weasley abolished last year, and have asked Mrs Cho Chang Westleigh to head it for us.

"Now clearly, the greatest burden of these times is likely to fall on the Department of Magical Enforcement. I am therefore relieved to tell you that Mr Dennis Creevey, lately Head of Auror Branch, has accepted promotion to Head of that Department. Dennis?"

"Thank you, Minister Potter…" Dennis began, but Harry interrupted him.

" _Colonel_ Potter." He said firmly. "UNIT has reactivated my commission and promoted me. I intend to be known as Colonel Harry Potter, Minister of Magic."

"You're going to use a muggle title? A military one?" Susan asked. "That's going to upset people!"

"I certainly hope so." Harry told her. "They need to be reminded where the power lies, Susan. We talk about the 'wizard world' and the 'muggle world' as if they were two separate things. But the truth is that there's only one world, and we're part of it. Not the biggest or most powerful part, either. There are a hundred times as many muggles as there are wizards. They're technologically advanced, heavily-armed and they've been practising warfare for millennia. Plus some of them – not many but enough – are Mutants or Metahumans with powers that make wizards look silly. We can't ignore them, and they could wipe us out without breaking a sweat. If we want to survive, we have to work with them.

"Now 99% of them don't know we exist, and never will. If they did, they'd want us controlled or wiped out. So we have to make sure the one per cent who do know can trust and rely on us not to make trouble, to co-operate with them, and to help when we're needed. Otherwise, they tell everybody, and we're done for.

"Now, I interrupted you, Dennis. Carry on, please."

"Of course, er, Colonel." Dennis replied. "Minister Weasleys' enforcement policies relied on observation and security rather than active intervention. As a result, Auror Branch has been run down in numbers and budget, while Whitelighter Branch has grown.

"Clearly, this is unsustainable, and while I have no intention of running down Whitelighter Branch, I do intend to rebuild and enhance our Auror capabilities. For that reason, I have appointed Scorpius Malfoy as Head of Aurors.

"At the same time, I want to extend the field support capability of Whitelighters to bring them into line with their other skills and increase the potential for inter-Branch co-operation. I am therefore pleased to announce that James Potter will be rejoining the Department as Head of Whitelighters."

"I thought James Potter was a freelance curse-breaker?" Cho enquired.

"He was a Whitelighter before." Harry told her. "He resigned just after I did. How did you talk him back, Dennis?"

"He didn't need much persuading." Dennis allowed. "He just said, 'As long as the old man doesn't kick off about it, I'm in'!"

"I could kick off till I was blue in the face," Harry said dourly, "and it'd make not a blind bit of difference to that one. Minerva used to say he was his grandfather all over again!"

"No bad thing, if true." Dennis noted. "Unfortunately, with the suicide of Dean Thomas, we can't debrief him any further. But Cormac McLaggen is a marked man, now. There's no hole deep enough for him to hide in. not with every Auror, Whitelighter and Council Warden looking for him."

"The White Council is involved?" Susan asked.

"Fully." Harry told her. "As are WAND and UNIT. If necessary, we can even call in Avengers Branch. We've also been promised the co-operation of the Brotherhood of the Sword. The Black Council appear to use ritual magic, which may mean demon-summoning. Dante Sparda has promised help in that event.

"Now we all have work to do, people, so let's do it. And above all, let's be careful out there!"

"We're sure it was Neville?" Hermione asked anxiously.

"Who else could it have been?" Ron asked. "There's only a few people could've Apparated past the wards on the safe-house that quietly, and most of them were here when it happened!

"You were upstairs asleep, pet, and anyway, we both know you couldn't commit cold-blooded murder like that.

"Harry, Draco and I were down here, just about half-bladdered, all of us. That leaves Neville, who has the skills, and has more motive than all of us put together. Obvious, really."

"So what are you going to do?" She was looking at Harry.

"Not a damn thing." Harry told her. "Look, I doubt Dean knew any more than he'd already told us. More interrogation, even Soulgazing, would've been a waste of time. The longer we had him, the more risk there was of somebody from the other side coming to get him, and they would've had a use for what he knew about us.

"Better this way. Most people think he killed himself, and they aren't surprised – we've let folk think he was mentally ill, which he was, in a way. "Never tickle a sleeping dragon', right?"

"You always knew when to break the rules, both of you." She said. "Well, I've got to get off. I promised Hugo and Becky I'd mind Augusta while they go and see a film."

She hugged them both firmly, and left.

"Fancy a butterbeer?" Ron asked.

They sat in the kitchen.

"You told Neville where Dean was, didn't you?" Harry asked.

"Why would I do that?" Ron countered.

"For the same reason you either smothered or strangled Arabella Riddle before you buried her." Harry told him. "And she's not the only one who suddenly and conveniently died while I wasn't looking. I know why, and I'm grateful. There are some things I can't or won't do myself, even when they have to be done. That applies to Dean, he was more dangerous to us alive.

"Why didn't you do it yourself this time?"

"Neville needed closure." Ron said. "He has modern ideas, and believes in them. But in his bones he's still a Pureblood aristocrat like Draco. If he'd left a betrayal unavenged, he'd never have got his head straight again.

"But now that's done, he might get round to getting his body sorted out. There's muggle surgeons who could fix him up, but he wouldn't go to them."

"He told me he wasn't allowed." Harry said.

Ron shook his head. "Not true. The limp and the scar were his way of reminding himself that he had unfinished business. Now he doesn't.

"I've asked Draco to put Neville in touch with his old oppo, Doug Howser. Howser works at some teaching hospital in Seattle, now. Place has a good reputation, they'll fix Nev up a treat, if he goes."

"Sure you won't come back to the Ministry, Ron? I could do with you around, mate." Harry asked.

Ron shook his head. "Not a good idea, Harry. People would see it as an Order of the Phoenix or Dumbledores' Army takeover. This way, it's just you, the Boy Who lived, the Master of Death, putting himself on the line for the rest of us again.

"Besides, 'Mione and I have got more clout – and fewer rules – where we are. And we're on your side. All that influence, all the money, and all the gadgets – magical or tech – you need, just for the asking.

"I'll always have your back, Harry, don't you worry."

"I'll drink to that!" Said the Minister of Magic.

"Damn, oh damn that man Potter!" Jeremiah Fudge raged. "We were so close! Another few years…."

"Calm down, Jeremiah, you'll burst a blood-vessel!" Cormac McLaggen told him. "Have some more Firewhisky, and breathe, for Plutos' sake!

"It's nobodys' fault, old friend. We had no way of knowing Wood would even approach Potter. The Wizengamot has always been hands-off, we never expected them to tell Wood to take actual action!

"We certainly didn't expect Potter to snap out of his funk like that. As far as we knew, he was just marking time until the DADA post came along, so he could spend his days as a schoolmaster.

"But he's back, and as sharp as ever, apparently. I imagine he's roped the Weasleys in?"

"No." Jeremiah stated. "They're both staying put at WE, apparently. The only thing we could get him on is that his eldest son is going to be Head of Whitelighters. But even then, there's an audit trail showing Potter had nothing to do with giving his son the job. I mean, Scorpius Malfoy is Head of Aurors now, and he's Potters' son-in-law, but he was next in line for the job anyway, and the promotion was down to Creevey, not Potter."

"Harry's cleverer than I thought." McLaggen allowed. "Not pulling his old allies in actually gives him more legitimacy as Minister. What's his relationship with his son?"

"Friendly, but not overly close." Jeremiah noted. "James Potter inclines more toward his mothers' side in the family split – he was her favourite – but not enough to drive a wedge between him and his father. James is a lone wolf, always has been, so he's not close to any of his family, but he is loyal."

"Any hope of the younger Malfoy? The family has a history of supporting cause like ours." Cormac asked.

"Scorpius? No chance!" Jeremiah snorted. "He's married to Potters' daughter, for one thing. Lily Potter Malfoy is as powerful a witch as you will find – I'm told her Patronus is a white tiger – she has all the resources of Torchwood behind her, and she adores her father. That's a can of flobberworms you don't want to open, Cormac!

"As for Scorpius himself – I think it's enough to say that he's the only Malfoy ever to be Sorted into Gryffindor!"

"I was a Gryffindor." Cormac reminded him.

"And you are a thug!" Said another voice. The third man had been sitting a little way off at the large table, but now leaned forward. A short, slight man in a muggle suit, hairless, one side of his face disfigured with what appeared to be a burn and heterochromic eyes, one blue, one hazel. "Just as Potter is a thug and presumably, this Malfoy.

"Thugs have their uses, but it will take more than magical muscle to stop the Council, we all know that!

"Now Thomas has been disposed of, which is no loss. He served his purpose as cover for you, Fudge. We can continue."

"How, Mr Arkham?" Jeremiah demanded. "We don't have a Minister we can control, and I'm out of a job!"

"Not entirely." Arkham smiled – it was not a pleasant expression. "We have a role for you, Fudge. Minister Weasleys' attempts to restore a more traditional society in your world proved popular with a large minority of your people. You will become the leader and spokesman for that group, Fudge. You will write, you will lecture, you will campaign. Potter is a believer in democracy, and his anxiety not to alienate a significant number of people will effectively limit the actions he can take.

"Remember, he is not our only threat. There are others equally formidable. Harry Dresden, Council Warden and Winter Knight, is also a match for the Archmage. Then there is my old nemesis, Dante Sparda and his Brotherhood of the Sword. Finally, there is the Sorceror Supreme. Dr Strange will not look the other way if the entire magical world is under threat. We need to be ready.

"Time is against us, the Conjunction comes soon. We cannot allow our enemies to prevent us making use of it.

"The time of the Black Council is at hand, but there is still much to do!"

THE END?


End file.
